Where is Battier!?!?!

maybe it's a mind game to make Kobe feel like he's losing his influence.

 

Martin held him pretty well.

 

LMfao, then we shouldn't have guarded him at all

 

What's the lineup you would have used?

 

I thought the same thing you though and had the exact same frustration you had.... at first. But Kobe is going to score no matter who is on him. He was scoring in the 4th, but Martin and Brooks were scoring in the 4th also. Shane was off offensively last night, even by his standards. He would have been too much of a liability on offense last night. Dont get me wrong, i love Shane and hope he retires a Rocket. But Brooks and martin were both providing firepower we needed to keep it close last night. Well played bty RA.

On a side note, when Shane didn't come back in after a timeout called when Kobe scored like 3 straight, my first thought was "Oh *****! DM just got off the phone and traded Shane right in the middle of the 4th Quarter". I thought they weren't playing him the rest of the game so he wouldn't get hurt. ::relieved::

 

My lineup in OT would have been

Lowry
Matin
Scola
Battier
Jeffries

O well...

 

I saw him having a cup of coffee with v3.0.

 

Last time I checked it was Odom the one killing us at the end of the game not Kobe.

 

Why do you think we put Martin on him? :grin:

 

We were trying to outscore the opponent, not defend them.

 

RA was to busy letting AB loss the game for us to put Shane in.

 

Who will Kmart guard?

 

Isn't there that trend to where if Kobe takes over 25 shots the lakers are so much more like to lose the game, he thought by having Kmart on him he would be obligated to shoot over that number....

 

I would have taken out one of the 2 PG's we had on the floor.

 

Kobe did no better against Martin than he did against Battier.

 

He's captaining a cellar dwellar.

But... he has intangibles... he's a leader... he has a high IQ... he's professional.

...he's a lock down perimeter defender (checks stats/tape)... oh, NVM.

 

Its the fact that they tried to outscore the Lakers that annoys me. Its fine when things are going well but Brooks and Lowry were not having that great of a shooting night.

 

Well, taking the defending world champions to overtime on their court was a nice change from the usual 4th quarter collapse. At least for a change, the Rockets did not lose because of a scoring drought at the end of the game. They lost because the Lakers' offense was better. Let's face it: our best defensive lineup isn't winning us too many games either.

IMO, the Rockets have two choices:

1) The best offensive lineup: Brooks, Lowry, Martin, Scola, Hayes
(yes, Hayes is effective in the offensive lineup, as he is a very good high-post passer and garbageman)

2) Our usual 4th quarter "defensive oriented" lineup: Lowry, Martin/Lee, Battier, Scola/Hill, Hayes

Lineup 2 is very prone to offensive droughts, especially at the end of games where the only guy that can create shots is Lowry.

If you noticed, last night, Scola was getting a lot of his late game points off of the pick-and-roll with Brooks. Scola struggles much more in the clutch when he is trying to create on his own. I think last night, Adelman wanted to see what lineup 2 could do. (Plus, Brooks is a known Laker-killer, and was the Rockets' MVP of the second-round series against the Lakers in 2009, so it made sense to keep him on the floor.)