The thing that kills me is that we're not just terrible at defending advanced offenses like the Warriors. We're also getting beat by ludicrously simple drive-and-kick basketball that college teams could defend, because once the ball finds one open guy the Rockets stand around waiting for the rebound rather than beginning the chain of quick, coordinated rotations that any competent NBA team should be able to do. With the personnel we have it's completely ludicrous that the defense has been so atrocious.
We've seen what they're capable of, we can only hope they can get back at that form, I'd be extremely disappointed otherwise. Such a great defensive group on paper, I agree with your statement 100 per cent! Only downpoint in my opinion is the lack of rim protection at the 4 spot. We see Ryno (specially) and Tucker having to rotate to cover the driving lanes and the opponents feasting at the rim. Ariza would be our best alternative, though not a great one for that purpose, but he's always designated for the opponent's best wing scorer. Maybe LMM can help at the 4 defensively, he did a good job on b**** Griffin yesterday in a couple of possessions down the stretch. Not much of a shot blocker and too light to defend the rim IMO, though. The thing we need the most now is a 4 with the ability to rotate and challenge the drive, Draymond-style (hate the dude but his rotations and rim protection are as good as it gets in modern NBA). Hard to find, I know. Apart from all of that, what surprises me the most is that with CP3 in town I'd never expect the complacency we've been seeing in the past few weeks. During the first couple of months, he was getting at guys even during all that games when he was on street clothes. Hard to accept what's happening now. I hope it was the sequence of injuries (LMM-Capela-Harden) and once we're back healthy the group will get it together. Wishful thinking.
People will say it's because of health. This team just doesn't give a **** about defense anymore. I have no clue what the first 25 games of the season were but obviously it wasn't the real Rockets. Same old **** different year. Live and die by the 3 and play no D
It's pretty hard to play good defense when you're missing all those long 3s and having to play transition D all night.
@BimaThug made the observation that the Rockets defense is "missing Harden." In that a "good offense" is a good defense. Less transition points and more teams facing our set up half court defense
Last nights game (yes it’s only one game). I so wanted CP3 to just take over the game and will us to a win (like Harden does nightly). He didn’t => was it because he couldn’t or wouldn’t? Yes he had a moment or two but over all he took an ass whipping and then invaded the other teams locker room after losing the game. This is/was an all world player I want/expect more than this from him. If this is all there is to him then...
Last night showed one thing: CP3 needs James way more than James needs CP3. We actually knew that, most of us at least. People claiming CP3-led Rox would be better than Harden wanted to bash James, clearly. James is a monster, the best offensive player in this generation, and we Rockets fans should be the first ones to stress that!! Let's get them both healthy and hope they can take turns dominating during clutch time, like they were doing. Our O must come back asap so our D can hopefully improve.
Patently absurd. Steve Nash would've been the greatest team defender ever if this was even somewhat true. God there are so many examples of bad offensive, good defensive teams. Garbage sentiment. Chris Paul has absolutely disappointed me with his lack of defensive fire the past couple months. No communicating and barking like in years past. That and Bzdelik is a terrible coach without any ability to coach fundamentals on D. D'antoni is obviously the same. It's clear when watching the Rockets, they fundamentally don't understand how to guard NBA plays. That and they don't have guys who can stop middle penetration without help, outside of CP3 and LMAM.
No defense lately is true. Thus the record over the last 15 games or so I feel this game vs the Clippers opened a lot of the players eyes. Just can’t go out & beat teams with offense. The “storming the locker room” will bring them together.....and play defense
Good posts from the both of you. But definitely wishful thinking. It is unbelievable how incompetent the Rockets coaching staff is, and you are right about how little Chris Paul has contributed to the defensive culture these past couple months. It's really bizarre when you look at it. Chris Paul has been tracked as an ELITE defender every year from 2013-14 to 2016-17. He peaked in DRAPM and DRPM last season. Almost definitely because of his awareness and communication which was so evident to me last year. When he got back from injury this year, he picked up right where we left off, and the Rockets looked all-time good for it. It's like he he began to believe the hype about how good his team was, and maybe subconciously doesn't feel the need to bring the same level of intensity? No idea how this has happened. But somwhere in December, he definitely stopped bringing it as a communicator and leader on D. But like I said, this isn't all on him, at all. Bzdelik, when you really look at his track record, is underwhelming as ****. He somehow gets credit for the 2015 Grizzlies defense, that had a core that was terrific without him several seasons before his arrival, and gets no blame for how terrible they were on defense in 2016. More than that, he was out of a job before that, coaching a small D1 college. This guy has no idea what he's doing compared to a Thibs, Adams, or Casey in Toronto. Morey completely botched that hiring for sure. The Rockets have way more defensive talent than last year, and they're gonna end up ranked the same, possibly worse on defense at this rate. And I really think there's something fundamentally wrong with the head coach not holding any accountability on defense in the first place. D'antoni gives minutes because of offensive production and guys are gonna listen to whatever Bzdelik could possibly be instilling during practices? I don't think so.
Think his tight rotation may have something to do with the defense. The rotation and playing time are set. Defense is all about desire => youth wanting to make their mark with more playing time or vets wanting to keep their spots. Our coach is more than set in his ways no matter what happens.
It has never been there . A lot of the early season returns were influenced by small sample size . We have some defensive talent , but lack athletically ... And right now we don't have energy to spare . Our D can be OK if we are fully healthy because our offense will be better and we should be fresher so guys can play harder . But Ariza is getting older and PJ is strength based . Luc is great as is Clint , but they can't cover for Ryan . Our guards should be better , but with the with them not being fully healthy they have had to expend more energy on O . Frankly I'm worried about the offense too , but I'm a pessimistic worrier by nature .
Tucker's D dropping is a byproduct of us asking him to do way more and way longer than we should be. That's what injuries do to a team. Ever wonder why Ariza plays like dogshit when he plays heavy minutes? It's like you people don't have eyes.
I’m sure once harden gets back and we normalize the rotation with everyone avg under 30 min besides harden cp3 and Gordon the defense will return. Harden first of all is not nearly as bad on D as most of you guys make him out to be. He’s not anything close to Anderson’s uselessness. He’s a another rebounder and guy who will get some steals playing the passing lanes. That little stuff helps a lot. Luc just got back he’s rusty but he is our best defender. Pj and Ariza are solid. Clint plays much better on D when he’s got nene behind him. Nene is very good team defender. Cp3 is very good but he’s being asked to do a lot with harden out (surprised surprise you dummies, harden been going thru that for years) Gordon is very solid imo he tries hard and has strength. No one on this team is a liability but Ryno. I get that we haven’t been great on D since luc cp3 clint nene and harden have been in and out of the rotation but I don’t know why ppl are surprised. We were always just trying to tread water with harden out. Harden has been bailing this team out for years. We as fans take that for granted and think we should just keep chugging along without him because we have a talented roster, which we do. But cmon other than golden state if you take the best player off any other team, there gonna struggle on both sides. Harden with anyone can win 50+ games. He’s truely one of the alltime greats. Not just alltime SG but any position he’s that special. But with that’s said we don’t have enough to beat golden state. We can give them a good series better than anyone else but we need Lebron and that’s why I wouldn’t ness with anything till this offseason and go full court for Lebron so you can truely even the playing field. We’re clearly the closet team to beating the warriors. I’m sure Lebron knows this. Now it’s up to Morey to figure out how to keep the best roster possible around a core or harden/cp3/Lebron. DJ would be nice and he would help. But imo swapping Anderson and Clint for him doesn’t help us beat the warriors at all it might make us worse. Sure if we could swap dj for Clint I’d be all for it but losing your starting front court for dj doesn’t do anything for me. When we were on that win streak Anderson was rolling shooing 50% in threes with almost 8 attempts. We need that kind of production in order to reach our highest potential. Losing him to upgrade the center spot, I just don’t see how that helps us at all.
Hes playing 25 min a night ....and asking him to do to much in what way? Arizas play goes down when he plays 40 min a night but what get affected most his offense not his defense. And it is affected because hes guarding the #1 option on the other team. dont compare **** just for the sake of comparing. Try to show just a little common sense when u post instead of spewing hot garbage like most of your posts
