Official Houston Rockets Thread: Phase 2 on hold

[Pastor Dillon]

Somehow Morey turned Anderson’s contract into Shumpert at the cost of a 1 round pick and got us out of the tax without compromising our roster. 

Pretty impressive. I think we still have the money to bring house back. 

Also this gets us well below the tax for next year and will mean we won’t have to pay the repeater tax during the CP3 contract. 

I like Ennis over Shump but the difference isn’t that big. 

[Pastor Dillon]

A couple of note worthy things:

Cp3/Gordon/Harden/Tucker/Capela starting 5 has only started 6 games together. We are 5-1 in those 6 starts, with the 1 loss coming by 2 points to the heat in a game CP3 played 12 minutes before leaving for 5 weeks due to injury. 

We have had players miss a combined 149 games due to injuries

Since the last time our starting 5 all played together we have added Austin Rivers, Iman Shumpert and Kenneth Faried to our bench at the expense of James Ennis, who was the last time our starting 5 was playing together anyway. 

We also will be adding 2 players by thursday, granted they wont be expected to be contributors. 

 

should make for an exciting finish. We need to go 17-8 to reach 50 wins. I would guess we need to go 20-5 to have any chance at the 3 seed. 

 

[Pastor Dillon]

well, i guess its time to bump this thread. 

This season stung a little. Honestly I was thrilled to win 2 against the warriors until the KD injury, and then it really hurt that we couldnt beat them. 

After having some time to reflect, I have some positive thoughts:

Harden had one of his best Post Seasons ever. His shooting number was still down, but a lot of that is from 2 really terrible shooting games, one of which we won, and the other, well the refs admitted to missing about 3 calls that would have changed his %. Nevertheless, he performed much better than he has historically. 

Against the warriors he averaged 35/7/5/2 shooting 46/36/82 so I'll take those numbers from him all day long. 

 

CP3 looks like hes lost a step, but the guy still has some great ball handling skills. I think he will never live up to his contract, but he can remain an important player for us for the next 2-3 years. He's just not going to be an iso guy or a 20 point scorer. Hes going to be a 3 and D guy when Harden is in the game and hes going to be run the offense guy when hes not. CP3's game 6 performance was very nice. 27/11/6. It gives me hope that we can get more of that in big moments next season. 

 

I don't buy the narrative that we blew game 6. I fully believe that Curry took game 6 from us, which I can live with. He was amazing in the 4th quarter and we played him about as well as we can. Iggy stepped up big. Thompson kept them in early. Green is a beast in the playoffs because the refs dont call as many fouls. We got everything we wanted, more rebounds, fewer turnovers and better 3 point shooting. In the end it wasn't enough

 

I also don't buy the "Window is closed" narrative. I still 100% believe we are the 2nd best team in the West. I also believe we would beat anyone in the east, struggling the most with the bucks and possibly losing that one. You don't blow that up when you have aging players, you try again. 

 

10 things moving forward:

1. resign MDA. We might as well ride with him the next couple years

2. don't trade any of our starting 5. They have been really good together, especially against 28 teams not named the warriors. Same for Capela. The only way I would trade Capela would be if we get a starting level wing for him, AND Deandre jordan is willing to take a pay cut to play here. Assuming neither is true, we need to keep him. 

3. Resign Shumpert. This is the easiest choice of the off season. Morey has the green light to pay the tax, avoiding it this season made a huge difference for us not getting into the repeater tax. Shumpert has a cap hold of like 15 million. there is no way hes going to make that kind of money. We need to give him a 1 year 8-9 million deal for a number of reasons. #1 hes a playoff rotation caliber player who we can't replace. #2. Having his expiring 1 year deal on the books come trade deadline season gives us more options. There is no reason to not sign Shumpert

4. Resign Gerald Green. Again, we own bird rights on him and can give him a 1 year 5 or 6 million deal that can be traded or just used to give us a solid bench player. 

5. Check out the market on Faried and Rivers. I think rivers is a 4/40 million player, which we obviously can't pay him. I would be willing to give Rivers our full MLE to bring him back, he was that important for us, and knowing CP3 will miss 20 games minimum, we need rivers back.  Faried is a different story. I think we should give him a standing 1 year vet min offer and then let him explore his options. If he can come back, we can use him as a back up big and spend more time experimenting with PF Faried shooting 3s. 

6. Give Danuel House the best offer we can give him, and then let it work itself out. I think we can pay him 2 million a year, which is slightly higher than the minimum. I like House, and he was great for us in the regular season before falling apart. I want him back but not at the expense of our MLE. 

7. I want to see growth from Clark and Hartenstine. These two guys are really the only chance for internal improvement, and I think they have the skills they need. Hartenstine is as good as you can be in the G-League, which means very little in the big leagues, but it means he has potential. I expect him to be a major rotation piece in his 3rd season, which is why I only want to offer Faried a 1 year deal. Clark has PJ Tucker potential. I would love to see him develop into an energy defender who can knock down open 3s. He flashed potential early on, stepped up and played big minutes when he had to, that says a lot about his character. 

8. Trade nene or convince him to retire. He just takes up space that he shouldnt be taking up, and are we really going to pay over 3 million in taxes for him to be on the roster next year?

9. Minute restrict CP3. We need to be religious about this in the regular season. No more back to backs ever. keep him around 28 minutes a night.

10. Find another wing with our MLE or a vet Minimum. Someone has to be out there for us. a couple guys probably out of range that I like are:

Danny Green,

Wesley Matthews,

Aminu,

Marvin Williams(but i doubt he opts out),

Caldwell-Pope(though he might think hes worth the money hes been getting),   

Rudy Gay (my man crush every season),

Demarre Carroll

Thabo Sefolosha 

 

Either way, October can't get here quick enough! 

[amac]

I don't think the window is closed, but your basically hoping for GSW to lose a key player or 2 in FA or due to injury. With a tail-end of his prime CP3 you had a real shot, but he appears to be past that stage

Edited May 20, 2019 by amac

[Pastor Dillon]

37 minutes ago, amac said:

I don't think the window is closed, but your basically hoping for GSW to lose a key player or 2 in FA or due to injury. With a tail-end of his prime CP3 you had a real shot, but he appears to be past that stage

its possible for us to beat the warriors as is. we just need a few more lucky bounces to go in. We've gone to 7 games last year and had the closest 6 game series in history this year. We aren't that far off, just havent been able to get it done. 

[Pastor Dillon]

Time to dust off the rockets thread and get back to homerism 

I must say it’s been difficult getting excited about the rockets 

trading for Westbrook was a gut punch for me. In a vacuum, he’s better than CP3 but his fit is 10x worse. He does nothing well that we like to do. Hopefully we adapt. 
 

looking at the season and we have a fairly easy schedule to start with after playing the Bucks. If we can’t jump out to 7-3 or 8-2 it’s gonna be a long season. 
 

here’s a look at the depth chart. 
 

westbrook/rivers

harden/Gordon/McLemore 

house/Sefolosha 

tucker/Anderson/Clark 

capela/Chandler/hartenstine 
 

nene and green are taking up space but won’t be playing. Nene might see a few games if we have injuries but we won’t risk paying him that big salary 

looks like the 6th man role is going back to Gordon. MDA said he plans to keep 2 of WB/Harden/Gordon on the court at all times, which means someone has to come off the bench. 
 

someone should convince Westbrook to come off the bench and win 6th man award. I doubt that’s happening but it would be something to have two MVP/6th man winners on one team. 
 

We have also hinted at playing two completely different styles every night, which could be an advantage for us. 
 

goals:

harden to three peat as scoring champ at 32 a game. Finish top 3 MVP voting 

Westbrook to shoot 32% from 3

capela to average 18/12 hit 65% from free throw line 

Gordon win 6th man averaging 18 a game on 40% from 3

house to hit 40% from 3 and average 10 a game. 
 

tucker earn a spot on all defensive teams and shoot 40% from 3 

[Pastor Dillon]

well last night was oddly familiar. It really sucks to be a rockets fan because the team is really good at times and then we blow really big leads on a consistent basis. I actually think we play better when we are in a tight game. When we get up big, we like to stand around and keep launching 3s. 

still theres some good things to look at about last night. Even though its just 1 game into the season, we played at the 4th fastest pace, which is good for us. Our defensive rating puts us 15th in the league, which isnt terrible. If we keep those two things right there, we will be fine. Our shooting condemned us last night. we missed 10 free throws, 6 of them from our guards. 

We had 57 rebounds, which is great for us because we struggled a lot there last season. An average shooting game from harden would have probably won this for us. 

I have a love/hate relationship with the defense the bucks and Jazz play on Harden. It works at keeping harden from shooting well, but it opens up the entire court for harden, hence the 14 assists. We just dont seem to make shots against the bucks. We had lots of open looks in the 4th. The bucks length gives us trouble. 

we had a chance last night, even after blowing the lead. Westbrook missed a game tying free throw with 4 minutes left, the bucks (without Giannis) scored 16 points in the final 8 and didnt miss a shot. 

The game could have gone either way depending on shooting. The bucks are a legit finals contender, and I didnt see anything to suggest that we couldn't play with them.

overall I am discouraged by Mike Dantonis inability to make the right adjustments, but im encouraged by westbrook. 

[vegas492]

2 hours ago, Pastor Dillon said:

well last night was oddly familiar. It really sucks to be a rockets fan because the team is really good at times and then we blow really big leads on a consistent basis. I actually think we play better when we are in a tight game. When we get up big, we like to stand around and keep launching 3s. 

still theres some good things to look at about last night. Even though its just 1 game into the season, we played at the 4th fastest pace, which is good for us. Our defensive rating puts us 15th in the league, which isnt terrible. If we keep those two things right there, we will be fine. Our shooting condemned us last night. we missed 10 free throws, 6 of them from our guards. 

We had 57 rebounds, which is great for us because we struggled a lot there last season. An average shooting game from harden would have probably won this for us. 

I have a love/hate relationship with the defense the bucks and Jazz play on Harden. It works at keeping harden from shooting well, but it opens up the entire court for harden, hence the 14 assists. We just dont seem to make shots against the bucks. We had lots of open looks in the 4th. The bucks length gives us trouble. 

we had a chance last night, even after blowing the lead. Westbrook missed a game tying free throw with 4 minutes left, the bucks (without Giannis) scored 16 points in the final 8 and didnt miss a shot. 

The game could have gone either way depending on shooting. The bucks are a legit finals contender, and I didnt see anything to suggest that we couldn't play with them.

overall I am discouraged by Mike Dantonis inability to make the right adjustments, but im encouraged by westbrook. 

I love watching Houston/MKE games.  They are fun games to watch.

Giannis was dominant and his supporting cast is looking good.

Dig your posts and look forward to future matchups.

[Pastor Dillon]

Well we’ve sucked really bad and are sitting 2-1. I think the upcoming road trip is what we need to break out of this shooting slump. 3 home games to start the season hasn’t been good for us. 
 

Washington has played well but we should beat them, setting up an interesting match up Friday night with Brooklyn. 
 

fun fact, the last two games we’ve played teams on the 2nd night of a back to back, Wednesday we play a team on 3 days rest that has another 2 days rest after our game. 
 

westbrook has been really solid. If harden and Gordon were shooting more respectable numbers, we are 3-0 and have 3 blow outs. Hopefully we get it figured out. 

[Pastor Dillon]

Injury bug hits us hard every year. 
 

green and nene out 

Gordon out 6 weeks

house and Capela our 

Westbrook resting either Friday or Saturday 

we are legit gonna have to play a game missing 4 of our top 6 players. 
 

could be interesting. 

[Pastor Dillon]

Tonight should be fun. 
 

no Westbrook/Capela/House/Gordon/Green/Nene 

I haven’t heard about Chandler but he played like 25 minutes last night so I wouldn’t be surprised if he sat out. 
 

this one could get ugly quickly. 

[Pastor Dillon]

Crazy win tonight. I’ll take it but we need to get guys healthy. 

[Pastor Dillon]

22 games into the season and harden is still averaging 38.5 a game. That’s insane. Also putting up 7 assists 6 rebounds and 2 steals. He’s doing this with constant double teams. 
 

the great Westbrook experiment is.....working??? I’m not sure. He’s been extremely inefficient on offense. He’s been fairly good on defense. He’s deferred to Harden every time Harden has wanted him to. But the guy just can’t shoot. He can push the pace and attack the basket. Our numbers without harden on the court have been terrible but I think that’s due to not having Eric Gordon. We miss Gordons lazer shooting from 3 steps behind the 3 point line. 

McLemore is having a nice season. He’s streaky for sure but definitely been a great value pick up for us.  I love that we gave him an2 year deal. Basically everyone is signed for next year. We are probably gonna miss the tax this year again, without it hurting the team. 
 

speaking of the team, through 22 games we rank 2nd in pace, 3rd in offense and 14th in defense. I believe you can take out 5 games where our D Just didn’t exist against average teams and we move into the top 10. So the ability is there. 

[Leader]

2 hours ago, Pastor Dillon said:

22 games into the season and harden is still averaging 38.5 a game. That’s insane. Also putting up 7 assists 6 rebounds and 2 steals. He’s doing this with constant double teams. 
 

the great Westbrook experiment is.....working??? I’m not sure. He’s been extremely inefficient on offense. He’s been fairly good on defense. He’s deferred to Harden every time Harden has wanted him to. But the guy just can’t shoot. He can push the pace and attack the basket. Our numbers without harden on the court have been terrible but I think that’s due to not having Eric Gordon. We miss Gordons lazer shooting from 3 steps behind the 3 point line. 

McLemore is having a nice season. He’s streaky for sure but definitely been a great value pick up for us.  I love that we gave him an2 year deal. Basically everyone is signed for next year. We are probably gonna miss the tax this year again, without it hurting the team. 
 

speaking of the team, through 22 games we rank 2nd in pace, 3rd in offense and 14th in defense. I believe you can take out 5 games where our D Just didn’t exist against average teams and we move into the top 10. So the ability is there. 

I think the "great Westbrook experiment" is working just fine. At the time of the trade all the fuss was how they couldnt/wouldnt work together and how it (and the team) would fail. The team's record indicates otherwise. HOU is a shade behind the LAC and moving up.

I've not watched a great deal of HOU games but from what I've read - Westbrook now is who Westbrook was when brought over from OKC. Strengths and deficiencies there seem to be playing out pretty much the same - which leads you to consider the record. The imminent demise of the Rockets has not occurred. How the players evolve over the course of the season will tell the tale. 

[Pastor Dillon]

1 hour ago, Leader said:

I think the "great Westbrook experiment" is working just fine. At the time of the trade all the fuss was how they couldnt/wouldnt work together and how it (and the team) would fail. The team's record indicates otherwise. HOU is a shade behind the LAC and moving up.

I've not watched a great deal of HOU games but from what I've read - Westbrook now is who Westbrook was when brought over from OKC. Strengths and deficiencies there seem to be playing out pretty much the same - which leads you to consider the record. The imminent demise of the Rockets has not occurred. How the players evolve over the course of the season will tell the tale. 

He’s shooting career lows across the board. He’s also had issues with ball hawking rebounds, which tends to effect Clint Capelas overall play. He takes a lot of dumb shots as well. 
 

so yeah basically the guy he’s always been but even more inefficient. 
 

James Harden is good enough to overcome that for a while.