Look at GSW, they appear to be deadlier without KD, does that make any sense? Drop 2 games against Clipps with KD but sweep Portland who everyone agrees is a better team without KD. The reality is their team has too much talent for ISOs, they are at their best when everybody is a threat and running around to get open because they are too talented. If they aren't KD centric then teams can't guard them effectively cuz they dont know who will torch them. OTH, GSW has obliterated every single iso heavy team that they came across: 1. Clippers - Lou Will iso heavy 2. Rox - Harden iso heavy 3. Portland - Dame Time iso heavy Isos to me are now strictly regular season plays, this isnt the 90s or even 2000s anymore where your best player Iso-ing will be able to pull a Jordan and singlehandedly win the game. Sure Rox got the furthest against GSW...but in the NBA runner up is just the first of the losers. If they want to beat GSW they need to emulate their system and get high bball IQ guys who know how to get open and know what to do with the ball once they get it. They need to overhaul their system and start running Harden and Cp3 and make them comfortable off the ball. Most of all they need to practice more, biggest reason they are always so sloppy and inconsistent is they don't practice. Harden and Cp3 may be vets but all their veteran experience is about losing, sad to say but they are both career playoff chokers. If they want to change anything they need to put in the work and start practicing more. And Dumbtoni needs to be more proactive on the court if he continues to be clueless he needs to get fired.
Of course, but the issue that I'm discussing is the oft stated "we have a top 2 Ortg", "we have one of the best Ortg's in history!". Having better talent makes everything easier. But we can only look at the system in place, with the talent in place. And doing that, EVERY YEAR, it gets you a great ORtg in the regular season, and a much less great ORtg in the playoffs. That HAS to say something about the talent. As I noted in the MDA timeout thread. There are lots of things that might work in the regular season. According to MDA analytics say that calling TO's won't stop other teams runs. Well, they might say that, but even if that's true 90% of the time (which I'm sure isn't the case if you look at historical results), sometimes you need to call a timeout to stop a run. But because MDA has no clue how to do that, because they never do it in the regular season, you can be sure he can't do it in the playoffs either. You're arguing that two things can't be true. That the Rockets don't need both (i) better talent, AND (ii) more variability in scheme. It's a style that has gotten worse in the playoffs against multiple teams. It's a style that has in particular made your MVP superstar get worse in the playoffs, year in and year out. It's a style that industry experts, former players, current players and former coaches have said is too simplistic and easier to scheme against. Etc. It's not JUST about talent. Steve Kerr came in and changed the Warriors and created a dynasty by marrying talent with scheme. The Rockets have married talent with scheme, but also need to recognize where it needs to be adjusted. Yes, absolutely agree. Just started a thread today about that - tongue in cheek the anti-this thread. ISO style, cutting style, all fast break, no fast break, whatever... the offense is less important to me. Having an offense that can score at high efficiency is important and can be done many ways. The GSW play the way they play, and stopping them is about the defensive hybrid switching scheme. Rockets need better, taller, more versatile two way players, principally at the forward positions. I'm not sure exactly what you're asking, but surmise it is something along the lines of - look at every teams style and see how different team styles change regular season to post-season. Not sure I even have to do that. The Rockets run the most heavy ISO system in the league, BY FAR. And have for years. The Rockets ORtg goes from top 2 in the regular season to 6/7 in the playoffs. I don't have to do much research to then to tell you that teams that are running less ISO heavy offenses are jumping up in the playoffs.... by default. 4-6 teams bypass the Rockets. Again, this is too simplistic. It can be and is BOTH. Otherwise system doesn't matter. But NBA history shows you multiple times it does. This GSW team. The Lakers with triangle. Etc. There's a reason why most NBA teams (and this is true for the NFL too) win their first championship with a few years of a coach being hired. You don't often see long-term coaches cycling through various players and talent on a team, and finally winning. Absolutely, often those recent coaching changes are tied to personnel changes, too. But I can't look past the historical evidence looking right at me in the face. It'd be like saying coaching and system and style doesn't matter. It does. This is just NOT TRUE. The Ortg in the 2017-18 regular season for the league was 108.6. For the playoffs it was 108.8. Maybe the regular season is littered with crappy teams bringing the average down? Sure... ok. Warriors were up. Raptors slightly down (still 2nd in Ortg in both RS and playoffs). Pacers were up. Sixers were up. Wizards were up. [I'm going in order of 17-18 playoff team Ortg btw]. Rockets were WAY down (a drop of 5.1 points per 100 possessions). Cavs were down - 3.5 points per 100. Bucks were down 1 pp100. Celtics were up. Pelicans were down 2.5 pp100. Timberwolves were WAY down - 6.4 pp100. Blazers were down - 2.3 pp100. Jazz were down slightly. Spurs were down - 4.2 pp100. Thunder were WAY down - 7.2 pp100. Heat were down - 3.8 pp100. It's just one year. And for some teams the sample size is small. But as you can see, some are up, some are down. Most that were WAY down really sucked in the playoffs. The Rockets didn't and that's a testament to how good their ISO players are. But it's just not true that ORtg goes down across the board in the playoffs. It's just one of those things people say sometimes. It's like people that say the FTrate goes down in the playoffs. Also not true. It's basically been up each of the last 4 years across the playoffs... but its been way down for Harden. The one thing that is pretty clear is that if you played the Warriors, your ORtg was down. Spurs, Pelicans, Rockets, Cavs. Well... yeah, the GSW are a great defensive team. Though the Rockets had the biggest decline of the 4 teams. But then, they also had the highest ORtg for the playoffs of the 4 teams even with that biggest decline. BUt of course the Rockets also played the TWolves in the first round (remember that 50 point 3rd quarter, lol). Analytics is hard here, imo. There's lots of stats, and advanced stats and super advanced stats, lol. I can only go based on what's happened. We are now multiple years in where even against teams that you have a great feeling you can beat, or in games where those teams have one or more of the best players injured, for many years now, the Rockets offense has underperformed and Harden specifically has underperformed, RELATIVE to regular season...
Everybody says fouls go down in the postseason. Not sure if that's true, but if it is, shouldn't we expect a team that makes higher than average use of free throws to be less effective in the playoffs?
It's not true. The FTRate in the playoffs is up. But its down for Harden a lot - so I assume down for the Rockets as a whole. You can see the data here: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/where-do-the-rockets-go-from-here/?addata=espn:frontpage
Harden didnt underperform though in game 5 and 6, its flat out untrue. He posted better stats than Klay and Steph. And like I said before playoff data is very match up dependent. So data is harder to judge. But also, when were timeouts ever a problem this POs? Not to mention, do you think Daryl and Mike are just stupid people who dont look at post season data???? Its not true. Believe me for Daryl that is assuredly not true.
I'd agree that playoff data is super hard to look at and draw conclusions from. I think it's that fact that also answers your last question. Do they look at playoff data? Yes. Can you draw a ton of definitive conclusions from playoff data? Maybe, or not? Even my ORtg regular season vs. playoff numbers - it's informative, but it's hard to sort through. Were timeouts a problem? Definitely there were select instances where timeouts weren't called appropriately, imo. Heck, that's the reason there's a whole thread about it. But otoh, timeouts are a pretty hard thing to figure out. It's not like a coach has an endless amount. But its clear - as MDA said it himself - he doesn't value calling a timeout for the sake of try to implement change, either through play call and design or just legit motivational leadership.... see that thread. And that's a problem. I'm not saying, as an example, that the timeout under 1 minute into a game or new half is supported by tons of data that says it "works". But I'm also not saying Pops is a bad head coach, or anywhere close - in fact he's obviously quite the opposite - and he does this all the time. We've seen Kerr do it frequently as well. Would you ever see MDA try this? Of course not. It's not his style....
I'm saying 4 because if you've got an unstoppable creator that is going to get to the rim against any defender and he's 7' tall.... as long as they guys around him can shoot and he can hit free throws then it doesn't matter whether he can shoot the 3.
C'mon. Seriously? The Rockets superstar players initiate contact blatantly more than anyone else in the league. And do so on 3 pointers more than anyone else in the league, by far. Whether those are "by the book" fouls or not, not factoring in human nature is a flaw. Refs aren't going to call it as much. Giannis actually initiates more contact than anyone I've seen almost since Shaq... but he's not doing it blatantly by attacking the edges of the rulebook. It's obviously frustrating as a Rockets fan, but as a human, it's completely understandable why it happens the way it does. Giannis is shooting 2 more FTA per game than the regular season on similar mpg and basically the exact same FGA/g.
Yea, we dont really have the qualifications. But Daryl and Mike being who they are should be able to. Thats what I mean. No they were not, time outs did not mean anything and they were not the reason or even a reason we lost to GS, cmon man. This whole time out non sense needs to stop, predictable offense, off ball movement, whatever, those i can understand but this time out stuff is not logical. I dont really think they are. He calls out of time out plays all the time? Thats true. Not to mention, he called a bunch of timeouts in the GS series. So not only did he not really need to do it, he did it and it didnt even work. This is a case of winning bias imo. You think oh those guys did it, it must be why they are so successful. It doesnt make that much of a difference. You think Morey is not looking at playoff data either, no way.
That starts to argue that this approach is fatally flawed for postseason success. Which goes back to questioning the coaching staff/game plan...
I don't think anyone would list TOs as a top 5 problem with this team. I don't think the OOTO plays are good. AT ALL. They used to be better. But that said, with 6 games decided by 6 points or left, absolutely TO's should be considered as to how to do them better. Frankly, everything should be considered, at all times. It's a multi-billion business. That's their jobs.
Ok we can agree to disagree there. TOs didnt matter though. If you watch it, there were almost no instances where hey this TO could really turn the tides.
Yes they do. Both teams are better than us. They might not beat the Warriors but it'll be a battle. I'm looking forward to Draymond vs. Giannis if the Bucks make it.
Maybe, maybe not... we'll never know. For example, there was more than one instance where the Rockets had scrapped their way back in Oracle to being only down 2, or 4... but you could just feel their energy was almost rock bottom. It's hard to work your way back like that. And many of those times, inevitably, they'd make a stop, then miss a shot, then go back down the court and Steph would hit a three, or Looney would get an offensive rebound putback. I always wondered, why don't coaches call pre-emptive timeouts in situations like that? The hey, great freaking job, take a breather, go back out and do more of the same time out. Maybe that doesn't work. Who knows!! Point is, even if its just at the fringes, in a game where only a few possessions matter, everything should be on the table.
Stats does not always give you the truth......Steph and Klay could do damage with their offball movement and 2nd passes - indirect assists. Harden moving slowly with the ball in important minutes can negate things he did well in previous quarters.
(per basketball-reference.com) https://www.basketball-reference.co...onference-semifinals-rockets-vs-warriors.html 18/19 season & Rockets/Warriors playoff series (6 games) Warriors.....reg season........playoffs..........................Rockets....reg season........playoffs........ ORtg................115.9..............115.7..................................................115.5...............113.8 (-1.7 difference) DRtg.................109.5.............113.8 (+4.3 dif)...................................110.7...............115.7 (+5 dif) 1.7 difference in ORtg from regular season to playoffs is minuscule imo. Utah was #4 defense I believe. It should most definitely lower the Rockets PO offensive stats facing Jazz and Warriors.....but it shouldn’t mean throwing the baby out with the bath water. Spurs have a motion offense......with supposedly the greatest coach ever.....and they can’t make it out of the 1st rd the past two years. Puppet coaches like Spoelstra, Blatt, T Lue make it to the championship round......it’s the players. 11 points was the difference in the series.....not the difference of one game.
