For a team with veteran experience and tried-and-true coaching philosophies, a prolonged losing streak, even one at the beginning of the year, can be endured. After all, what determines one’s actual ability better than the opportunity to overcome immediate and looming adversity? The Houston Rockets of 2010-11, though, are revealing themselves to be less than the sum of their parts, a jumble of guys trying to find their places instead of veterans knowing what to do and when it should be done. And the team’s four game losing streak to start the season seems less like a road bump on the path to progress and more like a call to ring the alarm. Call in the calvary; this team desperately needs help coming up with clutch baskets, getting anything resembling an important stop and just about every other thing to which your favorite cliched sports writer likes to attribute the differences between a team that “gets it” and doesn’t. Right about now, the Houston Rockets don’t get anything easily, and it looks like a team desperately searching for an identity other than “snakebit”.
It wasn’t a must win. It won’t define the rest of the season, and we already knew that opposing star point guards, much less Chris freaking Paul, would have their way with our defense, or at least Aaron Brooks. But everything was going awkwardly, even when things worked. Luis Scola got 16 rebounds, but remembering one that meant anything shouldn’t be as hard of a proposition as it is. Chase Budinger and Shane Battier found themselves open behind the three point line time and again, yet neither could find his shot and ending up a combined 2-9 from behind the arc. Last night, the failures came in bunches, and the Rockets looked ill-prepared to handle them.
This Hornets team is not the world-beater that its 4-0 record implies, but I’ll be hard-pressed to remember a time (other than when he pummeled the Rockets for 40+ last year) when I have seen David West get such great post position (Scola caused so many forehead smacks to my face while I watched him play defense last night), basically needing to lean to one way or the other for a ridiculously high percentage shot. And Chris Paul? He still does as he pleases. Don’t protect the basket? Dead. Overprotect to not allow his under-the-basket craft? Dead, off of one pass (Paul hits his guys so well they usually don’t need to swing to give him the hockey assist). Step off his three so that you just don’t let the little warrior rip you apart inside? He was one for one from behind the line. In a game in which the Hornets only took 79 shots, it produced 107 points quite effectively. The New Orleans Hornets may not overwhelm many, but when Paul’s allowed to play ringmaster out there, the game is over before it begins. His is a talent so great that it will eat up any other team’s story that doesn’t want to impose its defensive will on him. And last night, Houston saw exactly what happens when a genius is allowed to roam free; he creates brilliance everywhere he goes, to the chagrin of the men in red and white.
No links today. Sorry; I’ll get you guys tomorrow.