i watched the Spurs wreck the Warriors the other day and wondered, "When was the last time we blew a team out of the building". A blow out, to me, means you win comfortably and your stars get some rest. Arbitrarily, I defined it as winning by 10 or more and Harden playing 32 minutes or less. Going through the schedule, I looked for all the games since January 1st that fit the criteria. 2/21 vs TOR 1/12 @ BKN 1/8 @ NYK 1/3 vs MIA http://espn.go.com/nba/team/schedule/_/name/hou On a whim, I looked at the Clippers and used Chris Paul's minutes. 4/5 @ LA 4/4 @ DEN 3/27 @ PHI 3/25 @ NYK 3/9 vs MIN 2/21 vs SAC 1/31 @ SA 1/22 vs BKN 1/10 vs DAL 1/7 vs LA 1/3 vs PHI http://espn.go.com/nba/boxscore?gameId=400579445 i'm not drawing too many conclusions - this is more "food for thought". Our injuries and Harden's MVP campaign both add up to more minutes for our resident superstar. All i can say is what we already know - our inability to put teams away and keep a lead is very poor. Horrid free throw shooting and the offense sputtering when Harden is out lets teams back into games. Hopefully our healthy big men will pick up the slack in the playoffs.
I expect us to blow the Spurs out tomorrow night. Them being on a back to back and without Splitter Anything elss and I will NOT be impressed.
Well. if we have to make lemonade out of lemons. At least we are getting close game experience and winning these. Knowing how to do what it takes late with only a 1 or 2 point lead (or deficit) is very valuable.
I've also found it very disheartening. Many games we'll be up big but let the opposing team claw its way back. I find it highly annoying but for the most part; we're winning these games.
It's hard to blow out teams when your bench is playing as starters due to injury. Your second unit becomes your first, and your third becomes your second. You don't close out games with your third unit, well, unless you're the Spurs.
That being said, had this team been together all season, and had a healthy Dwight I think we would have seen far more blowouts. The fact is, Harden has been carrying this team himself for the majority of the games against halfway decent opponents. Anytime you have to rely on one guy to do so much, its going to be tough to win an NBA game by a large margin. Plus the Rockets schedule the first half of the season vs. after the all-star break is a joke. You just aren't going to blow out good Western Conference teams very often at all. The fact that GS does this all the time is pretty remarkable. We shouldn't discount the Rockets success to win these types of games just because the Warriors are so much better at it.
Means we're ready for playoff ball.. Being able to close out games is another reason why last year ended in rd. 1
this is primarily due to injuries to the team - while its given valuable minutes to guys and bolsters our depth for the playoffs it does mean that teams can come back into games. Add in that when some of these guys are in the games teams will employ "hack - a - player" strategy to purposefully halt the Rockets offense and help the other team back in the game. Secondly when you look at some of the guys playing - they are all really young/inexperienced - Johnson, Kostas, Jones, DMo, Dorsey, Canaan, Black etc. This leads to disasters of course. Now its different with Golden State in that their bench has played a lot but its in a different way. Their starters play their units and then their bench plays their minutes as a unit. This leads to better chemistry of course and helps the bench play together as a unit. Unfortunately the Rockets keep having to plug their bench into their starting lineup all the time there is no real cohesion. For example the Warriors have played basically 5 different starting lineups all year (reality they played 8 but I exclude lineups they have only played 1 game). The Rockets have played 13 different starting lineups (again 18 total, but 5 of those lineups were just for 1 game) The most used lineup for the Warriors have played 52 games together - The top three most used starting lineup for the Rockets combined to have played 44 games together. There are 3 different lineups the Rockets have used 4 times also this season so basically you can take the 5 most used Rockets lineups this season and they add up to the most used Warriors lineup. Contrast that with last season the Warriors used 9 different starting lineups that played more than 1 game together. (Portland last year was incredible only played 2 different starting lineups all season long) The NBA is all about talent and hard work. Right now the Rockets have been getting by on the supreme talent of one player and the hard work of the others. Unfortunately for them they have the talent they just haven't been able to get all the talent together on the floor together. If you look back to the first 6 games of the season when this team was probably its healthiest (Jones and Bev alternated missing some of the games) the average margin of victory was 14.6 in those 6 games and this was prior to Smith and Brewer. Once the injuries to the rest of the front court and back court started happening that differential starting to dip more and more. I would expect the same if we got as healthy as we can get right now (meaning DMo, Papa are back and Dwight has no minutes restrictions) you will see guys like Ariza and Harden resting more and the Rockets being able to maintain their leads or possibly even grow them.
Bingo! We shouldn't be beating the teams we're beating all year due to the plague of injuries. We have to look at this as an OVER ACHIEVEMENT. Hopefully we head into the playoffs with a fully loaded roster for the first time ALL YEAR minus Beverly which may turn out to work in our favor. Tine will tell. Our bench got experience playing like starters all year so this should be to the Rockets advantage. Now we're gonna see how teams deal with Ariza and Brewer rotating along with Smith on the other teams best players. It's the playoffs and strategies CHANGE as I think Golden State will experience shortly..could be wrong..we shall see
IF the Rockets come out focused to start the game I will not be disappointed. It will all come down to playing tough D on the Spurs.
hardens first year here we use to blow teams out without major injuries, but still with a not as good roster. I would say the reason being is the poor FT shooting, and the lack of knock down shooters we had 2012-2013... if that team had the 3 falling that day they could blow out whoever.
When we blow out the spurs Wednesday that will close this thread. Friday's game will be closer but we will win that one close.
