I didn't see (notice) the refs targeting Kawhi is all I'm saying. The way the refs targeted Harden game one against the Warriors second round was the highest form of cheating. Refs were no where close to that level of corruption against Kawhi even with all his lawsuits out on Nike.
I'm can't agree with you because if there's one team that has similar depth issues up front, it's the Clippers. They have a front line rotation of Harrell, Zubac, and JaMychal Green. They might have better roster composition than the Rockets currently, but it's not MUCH MORE complete like you say. I'd put the Rockets backcourt rotation against anyone in the league currently, and Gordon and House is a solid rotation at the 3 as well. Capela, Chandler, and Harty is pretty nice at the 5 spot, assuming Harty can take that next step as a rotation player. It's really only the 4 spot that has question marks, and we have until February to try and address it. It's a big hole, but certainly one that can be plugged.
kawhi and PG can both help there. they arent great playmakers, but solid enough there given how they can space the floor each other, and the fact they should be able to generate plenty of offense from their defense. they have 3 of the best ISO players in the league, plus trez, shamet, harkless and zubac. they have a great coach who will defintely get that offense going. think the celtic team coached by doc the year they won the championship. in the finals they pretty much benched rondo and played eddie house at PG. they had no great playmakers on the floor, yet because of the spacing and talent they still got great looks all the time. the playmaking of bev, PG, Kawhi >>> house, allen, pierce
House was unplayable in the playoffs. We really don't know WHAT we have in House. It's very possible that he is not a good player next year. As for questioning their big rotation, Capela is better but their depth is really good. I'd want any and all of those three guys.
bro trez was the runner up sixth man of the year only to his teammate lou will! he basically played at an all-star level off the bench. zubac is a legit 7'+ big with a soft touch, and green is a player this whole BBS seemed to want. tuck is what ? 6'6 ? and 35 years old. tyson is 37!!! their frontline is easily better than ours.
you still need somewhat of a balance. you want guys put in their best positions so it can have a domino effect on the rest of the guys around you. you dont want guys having to pick up more slack on top of what they already need to do. the best teams limit that and check as many boxes as possible. the clips havent checked that box well i mean in 3 out of the 4 games they beat the lakers rondo had atleast 7 asst, including one where he had 16. playing 35, 41, 31 mins. I'd say his playmaker was a factor
I don't know about the same core. Gallinari was either their 1a or 1b last year, and Shai was a solid starter. Obviously upgrading from Gallinari to Kawhi is a big improvement and SGA to PG is a big improvement. Just should be noted that it isn't exactly last years team + Kawhi and PG. Conversely they added Mo Harkless and neither Zubac (holy ****, what a moronic trade by the Lakers) or Green (2 years, $10 million is a solid deal for the Clippers) or Shamet were with them a full year last year. There's no doubting the team has enough high end talent and enough role player talent. Kawhi, PG, Lou Williams, PBev, Harrell, Green, Zubac, Shamet, Harkless... that's 9 legit rotation players. The lineup weakness theoretically will be the frontcourt. If there were 2 Kawhi's, I might still go with the Raptors of this past year vs. these Lakers because the Raptors seemingly had a more balanced lineup with more size and versatility in the frontcourt... but there aren't a lot of teams where that might be a problem. You could definitely say the Lakers, but then the Lakers seemingly have a disadvantage in the backcourt/wings relative to the Clippers. I'd put the Clippers as the favorites, but not by a long-shot. Lakers, Bucks, 76ers, Rockets, Nuggets, Jazz I think all have legit shot. Yep. Defense and roll players. Who steps up for the Rockets after Harden/PG. Lou Williams scored 30 twice against the Warriors, and 25 one of the other games. Sure, he also put in a 3-21 performance with 8 points in the game 6 loss, but now he's their 3rd scorer. We have to hope EG stays healthy and in the zone to get that. Trez put up games of 24,25 and 26 points. Not good/horrible rebounding, but he's now at best their 4th best scorer. And they can run the lock down defensive lineups, too, with Kawhi/PG/Bev/Green plus Zubac if going big or Harkless if going small (Green at C). The Rockets chance will come down to two things, imo: 1. Danuel House, Jr. Can he keep shooting 41% on threes, increase his scoring from 9 to 13ish a game, play solid if not amazing defense and keep that up for the playoffs? 2. DM picking up a legit, rotational PF piece, without sacrificing anything meaningful. And MDA actually playing that dude. JaMychal Green would have been doubly great since it would have meant no Green on the Clippers. One of the Knicks PFs might be something to keep an eye on.
they were better with rondo off the floor. the lakers absolutely could not stop them once house out there spacing the floor. i just do not feel like its going to be anything that would stop them from winning a title, while the rockets potential issues can easily tank us. i dont see how we can match up with the teams like the lakers or sixers with huge TALENTED front lines. i
wouldn't say that either. he played major minutes in their wins. that says more than limited minutes guessing they were better with him off the floor at the end of the day, that boston team has nothing to do with this clips team tbh
im using it as example because they have the same coach, and didnt need to have a big time playmaker to have success. the clippers have more than enough and at this point have a better roster than the rockets.
same coach, all different personnel. rondo was a significant playmaker. saying they didnt need him to win isn't accurate
LouWill is definitely a point, even if not a "traditional floor general". He still produced 7.3 assists/36 minutes, not quite as good as Lowry, but close (Lowry had 9.2). His assist % of 33% was also close to Lowry's of 34.9%. The Clippers were 9th in ORtg last year. Not really championship level, but maybe in a parity league, especially if they are top 3 in defense. And I'd expect them to be better from an ORtg perspective this year anyway. And again, in a parity league, not sure if ranking will be as important as what the actual ORtg is. There might not be that much difference between the top ORtg team and the 10th ORtg team. The difference in unadjusted ORtg and Drtg between the first and 10th ranked team in 18/19 was about 4 points (for both offense and defense)... will be interesting to see if/how that changes.
I have outgrown the time when strength on paper mattered to me. It is all about matchups. Clippers look good. Rockets backcourt look good. So let's play!
i don't see lou as a point. hes certainly going to be put in that position if they don't get another actual pg. but everyone knows hes at his best being able to attack and score the ball. its not like they're going to sign anyone significant to play "pg" so theyre going to just see what happens it looks like
Yep, given the moves (or lack thereof) at the forward position in the offseason, House is SUPER important to this team this year. Bear in mind, in the regular season at least, the Rockets were 27-12 in games House played, a 69% win %, equivalent to a 57 win season. They were 26-17 in the games he didn't play, a 60% win %, equivalent to a 50 win season. Of his 39 games played, he had a gamescore higher than 7 in 21 of those. That's not a super high game score by any stretch. It's a "solid" role player game. In those 21 games, the Rockets were 17-4. So basically if House played and just played solid, the Rockets had an 81% chance to win the game (a 66 win season). Can House play 75+ games, be a little bit better, and a little bit more consistent, and have that carry over to the playoffs? He better...
He played like 66% of his minutes at PG last year. A higher % the prior year. I suspect his time actually "running PG" will go down this year - even if he is still "technically" the PG - but that's because he'll be out there with two guys better than him dominating the ball a bit more, not because he isn't a PG. That he's a score-first PG doesn't really matter. More relevant will be Doc putting in place an offense that works for that personnel. Relative to Lou, more relevant than whether he plays PG for them or not is how effective can he be off ball.
who was the great playmaker the clippers had last year when they won 48 games and had a top 10 offense? that rookie shai ? LOL they lost him, and gallo, who is only a scorer, and added two legit versatile two-way NBA stars and you think they somehow will not be best team in the league. LOL
agree with much here. but it still seen as a weakness to me atm. we can assume its just going to work for them but things dont usually seem all as great as they may seem. Doc does have his work cut out for him to make this work. they've got plenty of scorers but lets see if you can sacrifice and do all the other things needed to win. things are much different when you can get underestimated by teams like they were a year ago. now they are one of the targets, teams will take seriously in a pretty open western conference
regular season, you can get away with a ton. the clips had their identity. they played hard and got into teams every single night. you can have a good regular season if your team is on the same page. why not? there's a ton of absolutely terrible teams that you can rack up wins against. winning 48 games was good relative to their standards because mostly everyone thought they would be bad. not really sure what so funny about Shai. He started 73/82 games all played and he played nearly 30 mins as a highly talented rook and is a definite ball handler
yea he was traded for a multiple time versatile all-star that does everything incudling handling the ball. you are in denial as many fans seem to be when moves like this happen. they try to find any little thing they can to say the team wont be as good as people think. tons of terrible teams to rack up wins against in the western conference ???? LOL the rockets only 4 more wins than they did, and they had just as much roster turnover throughout the season. if you thought they got up into people last year, what do you think is going to happen ADDING two, two-way STARS ??????? the clippers are clearly the favorites here
