Only player to score off the bench tonight was Austin Rivers besides Chandler's dunk that should not have counted anyways. I have said time and time before its the same old rockets just a different year with some different players. I can't believe how mentally inept we become in 4th quarters of games. We literally forget how to play basketball it is pathetic. Once again Morey is going to have to make some magic with trades this year to get some production off the bench. Sefolosha is wasting a roster spot, Gary Clark is not NBA ready yet. Isaiah is making improvements but pringles won't play him, and Clemons is the size of a gnome All that can fixed by adding some pieces. However, Westbrook is the biggest problem right now. He shot is completely gone. I don't know if it is physical or mental but nothing looks natural besides the catch and shoot and sometimes the mid-range looks ok. He is a turnover machine, surprisingly a bad defender will all his athleticism, oh and did I mention he can't shoot the ball? Our only hope this year in the playoffs is if he cuts down on the turnovers and becomes more engaged on defense. His shot is never coming back so he needs to adapt and we hope for the best .
Just because we have the worst bench production and a second star that can't shoot..... no, yeah, you're right.
MDA has to prove that he is the best shooting coach in the nba history. He knows how to teach Steve Nash.
of course we don’t, that’s been obvious from day 1 If anyone thought this current team was good enough to win it all then Idk what to tell u. They look good enough when Harden is scoring an efficient 40+ and they’re hitting shots, but that won’t happen at anything close to a consistent rate in the playoffs. It’s too much to expect Harden to win 4 playoff rounds by himself. Our bench is the worst in the league. We’re a below average shooting team, but all we do is launch jumpers. Harden masks so many issues by just going out and dropping 40-50.
This has been known. All we are doing is riding Harden's historic regular season production so we can get fake 50 wins and then bow out in the Playoffs. Morey and Tillman wasted Harden's prime.
WB is crap for this team overall. He’ll have some good games , but overall he’ll make us worse than with a healthy CP3. Unfortunately, we’re better than with a hurt/non-playing CP3 so we’ll keep holding on to him.
House and Gordon are nice pieces. They arent amazing but they are really important to us Its because they are the only players we have besides Harden, Clint, PJ, Austin, and WB that MDA trusts . And if the game is even somewhat close , MDA ONLY plays guys he trusts. Without them we are effectively 5 deep. Even tho guys like Clark and Hartenstein have shown that they CAN contribute but are inconsistent. And guys like Tyson and Thabo who are supposedly trustworthy vets. YES we need more. Morey will have to work magic and Til Til might have to pay the tax. But im not sure I'd pay the tax if I was tilman. Even if i get a good player the team is limited by this coach. And what guarantees do i have that if i go out and get another player that MDA will "trust" him. It better be a 3 point shooter too , because otherwise the only spot on the floor is at 5 and we have Clint and PJ ahead of you.
We have a huge hole at the PF spot that Morey can't address/Tilman refuses to pay for. We have a mediocre coach who is on his way out so he doesn't give a damn. We have a player that clearly doesn't fit our system and is shooting a career worst year. We rose to prominence at the same time as the Warriors but we never beat them in all these years so we ended up with the oldest team in the league still trying to compete. Despite having the oldest team in the league, D'antoni still wants to play them heavy minutes every night and not do a proper rotation. Even if we make it to the playoffs in one piece, we'll be too gassed to go anywhere. This team desperately needs high energy guys like Faried but Morey/Dantoni burned those bridges. It all started with overpaying for Ryno, then it continued with trading away all our assets and picks for CP3 which only resulted in overpaying for CP3. Now we're stuck with Westbrook and no picks. Morey really sucks at drafting and thinking picks are completely worthless, just keeps giving them away. E: I forgot to add on top of all that, we have a "leader" that still tries to draw fouls in crunch time rather than making the tough shots when it hasn't worked and costed us playoffs games time and time again. Seriously, how many offensive calls/turnovers will Harden keep making in crunch time before he gets it. Just shoot the shot with good form, not purposely trying to draw a foul that refs will never call 99% of the time in that situation. /rant
Unfortunately we don't have many players to work with in trades unless we're moving Capela or Tucker who have been our 2nd/3rd best players this year. No one is going to trade good players for Gary Clark. Plus we have an owner who won't pay extra cash so we can't sign any buyouts/free agents that might help.
We don’t know exactly what we have yet and just how much more we need because we haven’t been healthy all year. Let it ride out before all the doom and gloom cry fest posts we always have.
This team was doomed from the start... We are toast against the top 4/5 teams in the West in a series and probably against the top 4 in the East. This loss tonight just kike the Clippers loss tells me this team (and their dumb ass coach) never learn, and a superstar player who is NOT CLUTCH.. We are doomed I tell ya !