For game 7, we CANNOT try to force switches and run isolation plays. If you've watched the games, the GSW tries really hard to take all the time off the clock when we set picks for the switch we want with the ISOs. What I'd do is tell the team to set more picks in transition to confuse the refs and stop wasting time on it so that we have set plays that we want from the 14-second mark. This obviously means that Harden will need to play at a faster pace and bring the ball up quicker. This will be harder to do, but will be devastating vs GSW. You can write your own counters for the failure of our isolation plays, but what we cannot do is try to force switches and get the match-ups we want. This has NOT worked well for us. And when I hear, "do what we've been doing all season," it's a bit scary.
Probably one of the most frustrating things all series. I get that we try and force the switch to our advantage, but by the time it happens, there's only 8 or so seconds left on the shot clock and the offense goes to crap from there. You have to do this in transition, push the ball up faster, or run a high screen and roll so there's more room to operate. It's so frustrating watching the shot clock go under 10 seconds only to see the Rockets not in any sort of offensive set. With that said, go Rockets!
We need to do what we did in Game 2. But Harden will have to shoulder all the play making without CP. It will work if they play smart. Forcing the "mismatch" on GS is dumb. There is no mismatch, except when Looney is on the floor. All the other guys can guard anybody. I get that we want to attack Curry. But that is not worth wasting our possessions. If we get Curry on Harden, great. If not, just go and do your thing regardless of who is guarding you. I hope they do more PnR with Capela. Get Draymond to worry about Capela again and open up the middle for penetration.
Rockets play iso precisely for same reason that GSW plays iso, because both teams play heavy switch D. And if Rockets don't create mismatches on weakest defender than the iso is less efficient. There is a trade off for efficiency. Gotta dance with the girl who brung yah. The key is not clock management per se, but who's better defensively and who can make their shots. Rockets have to make it rain on O and dam it up on D.
The problem is that Harden is going to be switched to guard Klay, Steph, and KD. And also the fact that they force us to take a long time to force the switches we want. Whatever we do, we can't take 10 seconds to create an isolation situation. Harden spends way too much time preparing and not enough time executing. We don't have the same mentality when we're defending them -- we don't force GSW to shave 10 seconds of the shot clock when they run their picks. I suppose they're just dirtier than we are w/ the blatant screens, but still, we don't run the same way and we can't win like this.
