As I predicted early in the year, small ball will not work and Pj was too short for center, ultimately cost us the series. Below I will make several suggestions on how to fix the team. Take Notes Murray!! 1.Hire a defensive minded coach,jvg is great and maybe mark Jackson as an assistant advisor. With both Russ and Harden, the team can easily score 100 plus points if they can find a way to incorporate both of their strengths on offense. With Dantoni, as I predicted his philosophy was score first play defense later or just basically try to outscore the other team no matter if we gave up 200 points,he did not care about defense and it costs us. Our new philosophy should be to try and hold teams under 100 points with the confidence that we will have enough dynamic firepower between harden and Russ to score at least 101 points. 2.As I mentioned last year, a center like Ibaka would have been ideal and pj just adds no rim protection and is a poor rebounder. We need an athletic big than can hold and protect the paint and challenge shots or alter shots ala ibaka or bam Adebayo. If he can catch lobs and maybe do some pick and roll that would be a huge plus. This will somewhat offset those high turnovers from Russ and harden and will have opposing offensive players second guessing to run at the rim. Our motto should be “Give up no easy shots in the paint and make opposing offenses work for everything. 3. Trade Eg and Pj tucker, look pj is good in spurts but he has no business playing center and even can be a defensive liability at the 4 because his speed is declining and won’t be able to challenge shots on opposing offensive fast breaks. Keep in mind he is not a good rebounder also. Ideally Morey number 1 target should be to acquire a better suited center that’s great at defense ,to see how good a player is at defense, look up his "DFG percentage" which means how good offenses players score when guarded by them. If his dfg percentage is low, then that means the opposing players had a low shooting percentage. 4.A change in philosophy, all this 3 and D bs was all a fad and it ended terribly. I suggest we play defense first and on offense we run an offense where we look for the highest percentage shot. I want plays and a system were people have assignments and have players cutting. We cannot be afraid to run Westbrook at point, as a matter of fact he needs someone to play pick and roll with and so does harden. I would not mind Russ running point 55 percent of the time when harden is in there. People will not be able to double because harden is an outside threat so they cannot just leave him open. On offense Russ needs to run a lot of pick and rolls and force the defense to double at the rim. Also harden is getting more wear and tear on his body so we need to preserve him by taking more responsibility off him on offense. 5.If we end up keeping both roco and house then we can start house at the 3 and put roco at the 4 and have a athletic tall big at the 5.Similar to what the heat run, it won’t be small ball it would be athletic ball. But I would also recommend adding a true pf on the bench in case of matchup problems and flexibility. 6.Our bench depth should follow the same format as our starting offense. All this bs of putting in there 3 guards needs to stop. 7.Bring Harty back the kid got potential ,if you don’t bring him back please add another tall defensive center for the backup role..
our answer is in michael and patrick frittata. they are the heros we deserve, not the heroes we need.
Unfortunately, the one thing this franchise needs. Is the one thing that isn't going to happen. People just need to accept this franchise is going downhill with Tilman.
Getting JVG alone is going to be very challenging and stealing he and Mark Jackson from ESPN is going to be impossible.
We need to play multiple styles for different matchups. Also we need a pick and pop 5 and a veteran backup pg.
Get Spurs shooting coach and lock him in a gym with Westbrook for the entire offseason and pray he can fix Westbrook’s broke shot.
Agree with #4. The Rockets offensive philosophy has to change. The threes and layups is terrible - there's way too much variance with the three point shot. It's always feast or famine with the Rockets. Players that are knock down three point shooters tend to be a liability on the defensive end and the ones that are good two way players are just not affordable. It's time to bring back the mid-range game and motion offense. During crunch time or when the other team is making a run, I cringe every time I see the Rockets shoot a three. They rely too heavily on volume threes when all their players are terrible shooters. 2 points during winning time is a better shot than a 3 point shot IMO. A step back mid range shot is absolutely unguardable and the percentages have to be higher than a three point shot. The offensive diversity would make the Rockets harder to defend and game plan for - as of right now, all teams know the Rockets will hunt for the threes or layups and won't even bother with a midrange shot. It makes them too danged predictable and easy to defend. The analytics are nice and all but in real time, game time, points are points however you get them, even though the mid range shot is the "inefficient" shot. who cares. It's two points and moves the scoreboard.
You cant expect to pay 2 players the full max and put a team together.Rockets salary is ate on 2 Mvp's , where in reality they just need Harden, with a good supporting cast with the rest of that 40 mil. Just not going to work. It was stupid to trade for westbrook just to make Harden happy. They are going to have to let Westbrook go. Just saying... Maybe they thought Westbrook would be more tradable in this time period than CP3, so maybe they give it a year with Harden then flip him for assets, or rebuild. Who knows.
Try to get cousins, all the things are fixed. Remain all the useful players. T lue or Van Gundy as coach