Houston Rockets Preseason Thread 2018

I keep seeing people say That the Warriors played an outstanding game, but the Rockets really did themselves no favors at all with all those bricks and turnovers. The Warriors played good defense no doubt, and Steph went off in in the 3rd, but the way people are talking, you would've though the Warriors started and bench all had 30+ points. The Rockets gave the Warriors very little resistance, which is a straight up effort thing. Effort and finishing your plays. They need this game in the worst way, and again, it's pretty much a must win. No reason to lose this game, tease fans with a win at home, and lose up in Oakland. They have everything at their disposal for force this into a 7 game series.
 
Peep Game said:
I keep seeing people say That the Warriors played an outstanding game, but the Rockets really did themselves no favors at all with all those bricks and turnovers. The Warriors played good defense no doubt, and Steph went off in in the 3rd, but the way people are talking, you would've though the Warriors started and bench all had 30+ points. The Rockets gave the Warriors very little resistance, which is a straight up effort thing. Effort and finishing your plays. They need this game in the worst way, and again, it's pretty much a must win. No reason to lose this game, tease fans with a win at home, and lose up in Oakland. They have everything at their disposal for force this into a 7 game series.
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It wasn’t no point in trying to look at t from a glass half full type of perspective like guys like Ben Dubose was trying to do either. The game was a straight throw away.
 
statis22 said:
It wasn’t no point in trying to look at t from a glass half full type of perspective like guys like Ben Dubose was trying to do either. The game was a straight throw away.
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A throwaway the Rockets caused themselves. They should know by now they’re playing a team they can’t take for granted like they did at times vs Utah and Minny
 
no quit in them boys tonight :pimp: team is mentally tough, as has been stated plenty of times. when we lock in defensively, it's unreal how good we are. and that was with only a 7 man rotation, and without arguably our best perimeter defender in Luc.

harden gonna get love for his 1st half. cp3 gonna get love for carrying us when harden was gassed. gerald for his hustle/defense after horrible shot selection. gordon for his big 3 late. but man...

how bout the unheralded pj tucker and trevor ariza though? their defense was unreal down the stretch. we went to our tuckwagon lineup with tuck at the 5 for like 75% of the game. my guy was on his best barkley impression. 44 minutes and 16 boards as a 6'5 PF :pimp:
then you got ariza putting the clamps on klay and kd down the stretch, while hitting that big 3 to give us the lead in the 4th, plus some nice cuts to the basket. championship mentality from him :pimp:

it's time for us to be the first to win 2 in a row in this series. 7 man rotation was necessary for this game, but i'd like MDA to expand it for game 5 and beyond. dudes gave it their all tonight but you still need fresh legs going forward.

people continue to write us off... clutch city tho :pimp:
 
The amount of heart and grit this team had to take this was incredible. They had every reason to hold their heads initially after that 12-0 run, every blown ref call, and after every miraculous GSW pass and shot. Amazing to see. I was fuming at how soft Capela was playing, but PJ more than made up for it. I can get down with not having a lot of points if it's offset by a ton of hustle and boards. It was also funny seeing/hearing all that Harden "choker" stuff when he was the one keeping thing up e team afloat while everybody else's heads were spinning. Great to see Paul show up as well. Him and Harden were dead-set on winning this game, and that same type of intensity needs to be carried over to next game. Got the split we needed after giving it up the first game. Back to work.









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Still not a fan of a 7 man rotation, but you basically had to have that tonight. But going forward, this team really needs Ryno, Nene, Luc, and maybe even Joe Johnson to come in and be productive in the minutes they get.
 
Had to go to the seven man rotation this game. Luc has been borderline unplayable even on defense. Seems like he couldn’t or didn’t even want to lift his arms up even on defense and had plenty of boards taken from him also. We won’t even get into his offense.

This game got ugly quickly but didn’t get out of hand. Much heart shown by the Rockets. You tell me the Rockets, hell any team scores 95 against GSW I’m guessing that’s an L much less at Oracle. But they stayed in there and even throughout that onslaught came back and played well enough to win.

That being said, good adjustments by MDA. We can live with Durant going off, but when Curry/Thompson are rolling GSW is boarderline unstoppable. Ariza seemed to start the game and played on Curry a good amount and played him well, but they seemed to go away from it in the third and Curry had his way with us til Green guarded him in spot minutes at the end of the third. Say what you want about Green but you know he’s gonna play with intensity - may not be in control but he’a going to bring some energy. Those couple of blocks of Steph and that turnover on Livingston kept us in it and gave Harden some much needed time on the bench.

Either way, we came out with a good gameplan and think it’s still key to try to keep Curry/Klay in check. Curry had 28 but on 26 shots and I’ll take that any day, even with his hot 3rd quarter. We just gotta stop getting killed in the 3rd. I don’t get how analyst are killing Clint and saying how he’s a none factor. Imo he’s still playing good - his usual ~25 mins against a GSW team that usually takes away bigs. He’s getting limited touches but still forces Green to stay at his hip to prevent the lob which gets us random open layup at times. He’s getting rebounds and if he doesn’t he’s drawing attention and Tucker slides in and grabs some. He’s changing/challenging shots and hell he’s out there face guarding and checking 2 of the best perimeter players in the league today in KD/Curry.

I’m not sure if CP/Harden can play 45 mins the next couple of games, but it’ll be interesting to see what adjustments are made and how Kerr/MDA counter each other.

As much as I want to see a game 7 in Toyota Center, I want this over in 6. 6 more wins fellas.
 
Peep Game said:
The amount of heart and grit this team had to take this was incredible. They had every reason to hold their heads initially after that 12-0 run, every blown ref call, and after every miraculous GSW pass and shot. Amazing to see. I was fuming at how soft Capela was playing, but PJ more than made up for it. I can get down with not having a lot of points if it's offset by a ton of hustle and boards. It was also funny seeing/hearing all that Harden "choker" stuff when he was the one keeping thing up e team afloat while everybody else's heads were spinning. Great to see Paul show up as well. Him and Harden were dead-set on winning this game, and that same type of intensity needs to be carried over to next game. Got the split we needed after giving it up the first game. Back to work.









upload_2018-5-23_0-46-45.png


Still not a fan of a 7 man rotation, but you basically had to have that tonight. But going forward, this team really needs Ryno, Nene, Luc, and maybe even Joe Johnson to come in and be productive in the minutes they get.
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yup, agree with basically everything you said. need us to come out guns blazing in game 5 and take it to them. i sound like a broken record at this point, but we need to not wait until we're desperate or trailing for us to hit them first. we still haven't lost 2 in a row with our big 3 this season.

i'll pass on nene; he's unplayable unless it's against david west basically.
i think you still need to play luc even though he's an offensive liability. he hasn't been great on defense like usual but he still has the length and IQ for defensive rotations. guys need breathers out there on defense. our defense basically leads to our offense, so any help we get on that end propels us offensively.
if gerald can play, i think ryno can too, but he might be a lost cause at this point. basically at the point where i don't expect anything from him, and if we get something, then that's great. you just can't run ryno/green at the same time. space them out with other defensively capable lineups.
i don't mind trying iso joe either but i feel like it's a little too late to insert him and give him a shot. i could be wrong though, since he's a proven vet. then again, he wouldn't really be in there for long spurts.

so basically it's either luc or ryno and hope they're there mentally. crazy that some people are talking about "no iggy" as an excuse when luc is basically still hurt, and we have a 20M albatross contract sitting on the bench not playing.

clint isn't a "non-factor" but the warriors have definitely gameplanned and limited his effectiveness like they usually do. he wasn't that great on the boards either IMO. looney outplayed him minute for minute when they were on the court. then you got kerr going to hack-a-capela also. i'm interested in what MDA does here. i believe you can play clint... but probably only when draymond and (bell?) are their only bigs, and not when looney is in there. he was very bad to start the game.
 
Definitely echoing the same sentiments about PJ and Ariza. Ariza always manages to hit a clutch 3 during games when we need it, and PJ was eating up boards like he was Asik in 2011
 
and y’all can forget expanding the rotations because GS pretty much only played 6.5 guys just like we did. that’s basically is what’s its going to be for both teams going forward the rest of the series.

we have to like our chances too.
 
i think mda matched the short rotation of gs. all their star guys played big minutes too.

capela was so frustrating to watch. he played soft when he got the ball. played soft on the boards as well. he can keep draymond attached to his hip when he's in, but if that's the case, then harden, cp, and eg have to drive to the bucket more. draymond does a little jab step to show help, but then always jumps back to capela to prevent the oop. basket is wide open if they can get past their primary defender.

can't say enough about tuck and ariza. eg also played well overall. didn't shoot well from downtown, but stayed aggressive when we needed to. seems like him and a couple other guys were fumbling the ball around a lot. kind of looked like nerves, but hopefully they can get past that.

best out of 3 now and we've got homecourt advantage. win in game 5 would be huge. gotta take this one at home tomorrow night.
 
statis22 said:
and y’all can forget expanding the rotations because GS pretty much only played 6.5 guys just like we did. that’s basically is what’s its going to be for both teams going forward the rest of the series.

we have to like our chances too.
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We played 7 and they played 8. That extra 12-15 minutes with another body could be a difference maker come another game. But last night, that 7 man rotation was definitely out of both strategy and necessity, and happened to work. I def like our chances going forward as well. That same drive and energy needs to be brought the next game. I said if Houston won game 4, this would be a 7 game series. Rather for it to be over in 6 and move on.
 


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Can't have this in the second half. Paul and Harden just simply need to make their shots. It's basically 0-0 right now, and it's very important to come out the half hot and sustain things. The defense has been pretty good, but it needs to be even better. 3-2 is much better than 2-3.
 
Good god we gotta hit some shots. Shooting 36% to their 48% and somehow it’s tied.
 
Shot 37% and still managed to win. Unreal to me.

Can’t even really enjoy it right now, because I’m worried about cp’s hamstring. We’ve played a lot without him this season so it’ll be nothing new if he can’t play, but we definitely need him right now. Him and eg carried us offensively second half.
 
So torn about how I feel about this game. We got the W, but man seeing CPs face as he walked off was a blow.



Idk what I think about that. With his history, I’m not sure he’s back game 6 especially with the Rockets knowing you have a game 7 at home also. MDA already addressing not having CP3 Saturday as well.

Either way, we need a huge game from Harden. 0-20 on his last 20 3s. Law of averages says he at least hits 10 3s next game right? Got game 7 tickets but I want no part of that. End it Saturday.
 
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