USA Today: James Harden and Rockets impressed by Stephen Silas

People are casually throwing around the world bamboozled.

That is reserved for legendary showings.

 

David Robinson will forever be “just bamboozled.”

 

The media is just making up stuff. Oh so NOW he is impressed. Now that Harden's negative press is diminishing. I'm sure if Harden was 0-13, they would have printed something different.

 

House is a better defender than Wall or Gordon.

Gordon and Wall are horrendous with their off ball awareness.

 

There have been a lot of theories on why a team with this much defensive talent is the worst defense in the league.

Wall, Gordon, and Cousins are all one-way players contrary to popular belief. All below average defenders.

Cousins was sadly good pre-injury but not so much.

The Rockets just played all their most athletic and competent defenders.

Maybe Silas is too ‘cool’. No urgency or accountability at all on defense for this team so far.

This **** has to be way better.

 

LOL so your theory is that they should have been better off missing half of their rotation players and at least 2 of their starters than they would have been at full strength?

As far as ridiculous hot takes go, this is an impressive one.

 

Better off on defense. What advantages do you see a guy like Gordon having defensively over literally anybody that got minutes last night? Gordon is bad at everything except iso defense and the Rockets didn’t get killed in isolation.

Wall is a known flawed defender. All Wizards fans and their scouts know it.

For them to get 260 points put on them to start the year is disturbing.

 

What planet are you on that Gordon is a below average defender. We used him to shut down Donovan Mitchell for 2 years in the row in the playoffs. We had to force Gordon on both Chris Paul and Schroder last year because they were straight up torching Covington.

 

Anyone watch undisputed? They had a segment on this. If someone can post a link of that here would be good

 

That's completely ridiculous.

First off, when you go against some of the best true big men in the game and you are missing the ONLY true big man on the roster, it's a negative. The Rockets needed extra assmass, no matter what you think of Boogie defensively, he'd have helped in that area. On top of that, Wall is known as a plus defender even when he was hurt.

I agree that Gordon is just a scrub, but his availability helps the team in other areas.

That said, when your players are forced into roles they are not comfortable with or capable of, it throws things off on both ends of the court, and that's what had to happen due to the Rockets being down 6 players.....against playoff teams from the West.

And that's not even mentioning the fatigue factor of having to play short rotations AND play in Denver with short rotations getting beat up by guys WAY bigger than them.

There's very little you can take from those 2 games given the ridiculous handicap the team was playing with.

 

So your take from this is, logically, Gordon > Covington on defense?

You are talking about the single good thing Gordon does on defense.

Isolation defense.

And Mitchell was locked down by everyone. Literally everyone guarded him well.

Gordon’s good at probably the most useless part of defense today. Isolation. And he’s terrible at fighting through screens. Horrific actually. So I can’t even say he’s good on-ball overall. Just isolation.

A team can scout Gordon, know he isn’t to be exploited in ISO, and just run a ton of back cuts and screen actions his way and exploit him for the negative he is. Which very likely happens every year.

 

Stop the fxxxing hate. They lost to two western playoff teams. No shame in that.

 

People have explained why this is a narrow minded statement but I was more talking about his demeanor through all of the madness.

 

Yep. **** that guy

 

Gordon, Wall and Cousins also means the opponent has to play harder on defense. This will also limit their offense and things start to even out. Having a bunch of athletic defensive rookies does not mean we can compete with a full healthy Portland or Denver squad. This is the reason why those teams felt so comfortable against Houston, there was never a real threat.

So glad you aren't coaching The Rockets, you would only play the athletic rookies...

 

Those saying Houston is 0-2 is like saying The Pelicans are the best team in the west because they are 2-1 at the top of the standings....

 

I called it, there is no way Harden is not going to see what this full team can do, despite the losses, the bench is solid. We have Wall/Boogie and Gordon coming. He also gets insight from practice and his demeanor on the court shows me he is genuinely competing. This is not AD sitting on the bench or Kawhi faking an injury. He is going for it.

 

I don’t think this is a sign he wants to stay. What’s he suppose to say Silas sucks? My teammates suck?

 

I wish we had drafted a center like Denver did with Harty, I'm certain we wouldn't have let him go for Bruno.

 

Kobe brought it up but once he bought it in(after the Gasol trade) he never brought it up again. Harden might not be like that.