We are 3 games in and I'm curious to gauge how Clutchfans is reacting. Are you looking at the three games and saying it was crazy to think this team was as good or better than last year's? Melo looks washed, Capela looks worse than last year, MCW looks like a non-NBA player, Ennis looks like a foul prone low-bball iq try hard guy, Harden is back to no-defense Harden, etc. etc. etc. Is this another one of those "Not the same team" years? Are you already thinking it's not the same year now after 3 games and getting on board with the national narrative that this is a 55 win or worse team? OR It's 3 games. Any random 3 game sample from a season is totally meaningless and this one just happens to cause so much of a stir because it's at the beginning of the season. Melo is in a slump, Ennis will adjust, MCW...well let's skip him. Capela will round back into form, the defense will improve with reps, etc. Stop freaking out over 3 games have you learned NOTHING from analytics? When you vote, please be sure to realize I'm not asking you to factor in what can happen at the deadline or between now and then, I'm asking you to evaluate THIS team.
Some where in the middle. The Rockets lost to an underrated Pelicans team that is a tough match up for the Rockets. The Pelicans followed up beating the Rockets by dropping 140 points on the Kings. The Pelicans are good. The Rockets then beat the Lakers without Paul down the stretch, on the road with LeBron James and lost by two the next night to the Clippers without Chris Paul. The Rockets are not as good as they were last year, and they miss their defensive coach...... but they are still a good team. I didn't think that the Rockets were necessarily guaranteed to be the second best team in the West.
Right now I'm thinking I totally overrated Melo, thinking he was still good and the OKC system didn't suit him. Miss our defense, but still a small ample size, think we will be alright with CP3 returning, but scared that our championship window closed last year. Hope it's not the case.
Alot of well known question marks discussed for months going into the season. Pretty much all of them are not looking good. The rockets atm are no where near as good as a year ago. They had a number of new additions last year and at no point were they struggling this bad, specifically defensively. The body language and team morale just looks negative and the complete opposite of what we have seen before. JH/cp3/tucker etc made it a note in the offseason to say the transition to the new players to fit would be pretty easy. It doesn't look like that at all and the regression is showing. From the very beginning in 2017, the rockets came out with a purpose and wanted to let the league know they were a legitimate threat to GS. We're not seeing that same type of approach to start the year for a team that nearly knocked them out of the playoffs and that they still want to prove they are still capable. the best addition so far looks to be ennis and he seems to be the type of guy to be most valuable off the bench rather than a full time starting wing. mcw is not a rotational player. and its been well discussed what 34 year old melo is. hopeful that DM is going to make a move for an actual ariza replacement. When that is who knows? But its not looking good without that type of player on the roster
Pretty much what Nook just said for me, i still hope that with more games the team will kinda gel and get better but eh...especially losing Bdzelik, i'm starting to think it's a bigger factor than what i expected...
it's early yet. haven't seen much of anything yet to get enthused about, but I keep reminding myself it's not how you start, it's how you finish. April is a long, long way off.
The Rockets will be fine imo. We won't win 65, but should get 58-60 wins so long Paul, Harden and Capela stay relatively healthy.
defense definitely took a disappointing step back...GS will tear this defense apart I’m not high on Melo at all, but he still looks a lot worse than I anticipated...it’s hilarious that people think he could make a positive difference against GS if we don’t win a title this year, then it’s not happening with Harden, CP3, and a bunch of role players
Not excited about the roster as currently constructed - BUT I think having one more capable big man besides Clint could do serious wonders for defense and rebounding. Sadly, this is something we knew in the offseason that wasn't addressed. Chriss and Qi are wasted roster space. Hartenstein is too slow, and Clark is too green. Nene is apparently MIA.
Yeah, I think the sample size is too small to say anything definitive. I do think we have a size problem and we are playing guys out of position and that needs to be fixed. Other than that, I'm not sure we are worse. The Clippers are always going to give us issues thanks to the amount of Ex-Rockets that think it's game 7 of the finals when we play against them and it was a b2b (Especially after a big game) so the energy was always going to be low. We win that game with CP3 anyway. My big concerns aren't even really the defense but if we have backup bigs to even compete. We need something out of Hartenstein or Chriss otherwise teams with competent bigs are going to have career nights against this team.
For a switch everything defense you need certain types of players, guards that can somewhat hold their own being posted up and bigs that can somewhat switch out on to the perimeter and stay with a guy. 0 games is enough to tell me that Dirk Nowitzki would get killed switching out onto Harden or Paul. Don't see how building chemistry up to the Allstar break is going to make Melo a competent defender in any system.
Spoiler Time to adjust expectations after 3 games? No. No because games four & five will tell us a tremendous amount about this team/season. Too early to panic. Spoiler Time to adjust expectations after 3 games? No. No because there needs to be at least 11 games before firing any coaches or making any changes. Spoiler Spoiler In all seriousness, "not the same team".
Still plenty of time to improve things, but they clearly aren't on the same level as last year. I think some moves can be made to fix things - switch lineups around, make trades, generally try to get the chemistry down better - but the Rockets should have been hitting the ground running after last year and instead they're slipping around in mud.
We need to run pick and roll more. I'm tired of James Harden playing around with other teams. Its time to get a lot more serious.
small sample size warning..we only lost a single game with our big 3 playing......health is the most important thing until the playoffs
Biggest disappointments to me aren't necessarily the results of the games but the way our guys are playing. Capela looks soft on defense, the exact opposite of how he looked last year in the playoffs. It seems like everyone can easily blow by him and shoot over him at the rim, he has been terrible at rim protection. He also has been letting much smaller guys get tons of rebounds over him, and it has been absolutely killing us. He is definitely not playing up to his contract and I hope this changes. Ennis does not look as advertised on defense. Just looks like an average defender to me, which isn't going to work as an Ariza replacement. Ariza guarded Kawhi, Lebron, Durant for us and typically did a pretty good job. Ennis didn't look great defending Lebron and he doesn't look like the kind of guy who can guard the other teams best player, which is typically what Ariza did for us. Offensively though I have been impressed, he is way more athletic/explosive and so far (very small sample size) he has been a great shooter. MCW looks exactly how he has in past years, which is to say he is not an NBA caliber player. This guy needs to be make DRASTIC improvements (unlikely) or he should be out of the league. This guy does not deserve NBA minutes. He is bad at literally everything. Melo looks exactly as Zboy predicted all offseason, which is to say he is horrible. A lot of people are hoping he can improve, myself included, but at this point I don't really expect him to improve. I think this is the kind of player he is now. Would really love to be wrong here. At the end of the day it's only 3 games and we have plenty of time to figure it out, plenty of time to improve.
