IMHO its a result of the opponent adjusting. RA isn't exactly a master tactician on the court so more often than not we get taken by surprise by the other team's adjustments. That, plus probably fatigue since Battriza is playing more minutes than they should. By the time 4rth quarter comes around RA has already had a quarter's worth of time to study what the opponent did and counter it, hopefully by making timely adjustments and stressing to the players what needs to be done.
I've notice that the team starts out slow and that usually AB bails them out in the 3rd with his hot shooting. Teams are prob focusing more on him now in the 3rd so its harder.
Teams come out and play better defense with adjustments, refs start favoring calls for the other team due to adolf stern's edict, Adelman lets the chips fall where they may so he can come up with a solution by the 4th.
For the guys saying this has been a problem for years didn't watch the team in 2008 and 2009 because then it was the exact opposite. The third quarters were in fact THE STRONGEST and then the 4th was most of the time terrible.
that's because RA doesn't want to play Brian Cook.. if we're up by 20 on the 4th quarter, then he must play him.. :grin:
^ that is one of the reasons. The rockets have been playing a whole lot of back to back games so the starters are probably extremely tired. despite being tired they somehow pull together in the fourth quarter. 3rd quarter is when c-bud, lowry carry the team. well C-bud is out and Lowry is playing a lot of 4th quarter mins. so maybe this might be the reason.
oh yeah been like that. <object width="560" height="340"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/hFUdnzNF3Lk&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/hFUdnzNF3Lk&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="560" height="340"></embed></object>
