adonneus

I always love it when the Red94 podcast episode pops up in my podcast feed. Thanks, guys!

Congrats on your marriage Rahat!

 

Nice post, especially as hobbled as we have been, I would say this season was a gleaming success. I do believe we have the proper foundation for a championship. I do also believe that Morey has his work laid out for him this summer. Whereas in the past few seasons we were crippled by lack of stardom and had a solid supporting cast, now we have a solid star foundation and a hodgepodge collection of semi/mis-fits. The pegs not exactly fitting in their holes being:

• Pablo: Too old to be a major part of any dynastic ambitions, athletically outmatched by every PG in the league
• Terry: See Pablo, plus is best in a 2 guard role, not PG like we used him
• Jones: Too wildly inconsistent, zero floor spacing capabilities, can't post up, eaten alive by bigger PFs
• Smith: Like Jones but older
• Brewer: Inconsistent, gambles too much, useless in 1/2 court sets
• Beverley: Not a shot creator nor playmaker

All of these guys, IMO are totally expendable in pursuit of better fitting pegs. Other than Terry, who I believe will be happy in an inexpensive, greatly diminished role on a contender. Johnson and McDaniels are also as expendable but not included in the list because they didn't really see enough play time to determine their fit. Any combination of these guys should be used to bolster our PF and PG spots.

 

The guys other than H and H I would like to see stick around no matter what:

• Ariza: can't find a better 3 and D wing for the price, without whom we definitely would have seen a 2nd and possibly 1st round exit.
• D-Mo: emerged as one of the better post up players in the league, can spread the floor and is solid on D. Without who we would have never achieved the win total we did. Not nearly.
• Capela: Perfect answer for relieving Howard for 24 minutes per night.. Agreed.

Either way, In Morey We Trust and I know we'll be right back there next season.

 

GO ROCKETS!

I completely agree with this. We really need to keep D-Mo and Ariza. And we need Capela because I don't want to have to go back to Dorsey.

Everyone else is expendable. We need to get some shooters!

Teams that come up 2-0 wins 94% of the time. Just saying.

And only 9 teams have history have come back from 3-1.

In the same terms, teams that come up 3-1 win 96% of the time.

After the first game, we were all thinking, "I can't believe they missed that opportunity. They'll never get that close to the Warriors in Oakland again!" But lo, the Rockets were even closer in game 2. As they say, the series doesn't start until you win one on the other team's court, and the Warriors haven't done that. Until we lose at home, there's no reason to worry, especially with the Rockets' getting so close so far in Oracle.

I enjoyed reading this great article again in anticipation of tonight!

Like I said before those comments only concerned me due to the fact that the following night he defered the pressure by not taking the last shot or attempting to even make a play. I have to admit that I also have last yrs playoffs in my mind as well, where I witnessed as did the rest of us witness James harden not show up when the pressure grew. People can argue that Portland had a great scheme to defend him, but with the eye test he didn't even look like he wanted to fight at times.

Concerning this, I think that the bad last play against Toronto was just a poorly-drawn-up play. Everything went wrong in that play. And I don't think we can have James take the shot in 100% of those situations. Maybe 70%, but once in a while, it needs to be someone else or else defending it will be too easy. And last year's playoffs were a LONG time ago, and before Team USA. I think it's safe to say that Harden is a much different person and a much better leader than he was then. I don't have any reason to believe Harden will suddenly lose all of the obvious and immense leadership growth he has made in the past year.