Considering he has to compete with Curry, Green, and until recently Durant for the crown of “Who can whine to the refs the loudest and flop the hardest?” the title is really up for grabs. I just want it called evenly. Don’t go over Harden’s back and get a no-call, while touching Curry during a moving screen leads to a two shot foul. Either swallow the whistles or call it like a regular season game, but don’t mix and match.
The NBA needs to clarify next season what a landing area is, and how much legs kicking out the defender is supposed to tolerate from the shooter.
If the Raptors choke this Sunday in game seven (like they did back in 2001 against the Sixers), I’d be surprised if Kawhi stays. If TO wins, but get swept by the Bucks next round, that will also be grounds for Kawhi’s exit. My PVR was acting up and I completely missed game six. Probably would’ve ruined my econo one-beer drunk anyway.
“The James Harden Rockets have lost elimination games against both Kevin Durant and Kawhi Leonard teams without Durant and Leonard. Let that marinate.”
I didn’t see it, but how good are the Warriors? Take an elite player out of their lineup for 2 games and they win both games against a title-contending team. I think we talked about it on the 2017/18 thread last year that the Warriors could lose one of their top 3 and still win the NBA title, and the same might well be true this year, although Milwaukee is looking awfully good right now.
Absolute trash performance by most of the Rockets. Lack of urgency, attention to detail with fundamentals, and holy shit did Clint Capela get exposed. Everything was coming together for the Rockets to win that game: Curry was scoreless and in foul trouble the first half, no Durant, they outrebounded the Warriors early, the refs were in the Rockets favor. And it was still tied at halftime! Then they let the Warriors run them over the last 7 minutes of the game. Just a bunch of tin men.
On the outside, it looks like an abysmal job of preparing the team or making in game adjustments for Mike D’antoni, and it’ll probably cost him his job. Can’t fire the players, though I wouldn’t be surprised to see some major rotation changes this offseason. Let’s see if Tilman Fertitta is really going to spend some money or not.
I can’t fault Harden here. He averaged something like 32/7/6 or so for the series. He’s not LeBron. Another AllStar, or hell, just using the bench that got you to this point, and I think the Rockets win this series. As it is, just a great disappointment.
I didn’t see the game or even much of the series, but my take on D’Antoni is that he’s kind of the Andy Reid of the NBA. He’s great at preparing teams to win regular season games. His teams usually beat teams their supposed to. But put him in tight situations in which the team has to make adjustments, and it’s a different story. D’Antoni never seems to get over that hump for whatever reason, and I doubt he ever will.
Andy Reid isn’t a bad comp. Don Coryell might be better. Tremendously influential, offensively minded, a Hall of Famer when he decides to hang it up (that Coryell isn’t in the Hall is a damned shame), but just couldn’t win enough in the playoffs. The NBA would look very different without MDA and his Suns teams.
He just will not make adjustments in game, nor broaden his rotation, nor try to alter the flow of the game with a well thought out substitution or timeout. And he didn’t have this team mentally focused to winning a very winnable game at home. I can go either way on firing him—who do you replace him with, for starters?—but a new, volatile owner like Tilman Fertitta is not going to be patient and see if MDA can improve. As for volatility, how many owners in the NBA would say that the problem with their team is that they wouldn’t “step on [the other team’s] throat and cut their throats…”? You can take the restaurateur out of the Mob…
The Rockets did not lose this game. The Warriors won it. The Warriors’ deep bench, heart of a champion, Klay Thompson’s great 1st half, and Steph Curry’s outstanding 2nd half was too much for Houston.
I only saw the last bit of the game, but was impressed with Houston’s strategy to try to at least tie the game. I’ll save my nail biting for tomorrow’s game 7.
Chefguy’s a Blazers fan. Unlike the Rockets, his team earned a Game 7. Which I think they’ll win. Tremendous heart they’ve shown after losing one of their best players in Nurkic for the season.
Yeah, that’s what I was referring to. DEN’s going to come out hard, of course, but I think Portland can weather that storm as they have so many times before.
