Lakers... Champions next year? Not a chance but good luck with that. The West is way too strong for that rag tag bunch. Better make some serious off season power moves. The Mamba is old and broken.
Now, bout dem Rockets. Their problems begin at the top. McHale is not a coach. He should probably take a cue from his homeboys Larry Legend and Danny Ainge and take a front office position. The man coaches 0 defense and the players have admitted that they actually have no set offensive plays. Wtf?! Sooooo it's freestyle basketball pretty much. They push the floor and try to keep the other team constantly on their heels and in the best case scenarios, teams that are not equipped for this type of game actually try to run with them thus increasing the pace of the game even further. Shooters rain jump shots and 3's using 7 seconds or less on the shot clock. If the 3's are hitting, crappier opposing teams panic and get ran out the gym. High paced, 3 point powered Offense coupled with ZERO defense. They scored 145 on the shitastic ass Lakers this year but also gave up 130 to them! That strategy was great for a 4th place finish in the West but the playoffs are a different beast. This is where coaches make their money. You have to play the same team over and over again and in the West, there are no scrub teams playing like in the East. A good coach adjusts his teams attack/defense strategy throughout the series to expose a team's weaknesses. It was no secret that the Rockets were lacking in the defensive department and guess what? Portland had no problem playing the fast paced up and down game either. This was a great matchup. Both teams finished with the same regular season record. Time to see what the coaches come up with to separate these 2 evenly matched squads. Coaching strategy for Portland. Eliminate the Beard. They put Matthews in a constant running pattern to force Harden to either play D or get torched. That pretty much killed his game. The fast paced offense coupled with chasing a runner on D nonstop sent his game into the shitter. So what did McHale try to do? He tried to coach after 82 games of doing nothing. Suddenly, Asik is entered back into the equation for D and the game solely turns into a kick it into Howard post up game. Great, this actually might have potential for the inside out 3 point attack. Time to rain bombs on these boys, right? Yeah, except for Dwight forgot about the occasional kick out part of the game plan. He took it upon himself to do battle in the paint just about every time he touched the ball. Yes, he got buckets... Yes, he collected fouls although they let a lot of shit go but that's another beef for another rant... And YES, he missed damn near half of those foul shots. Meanwhile, the shooters become spectators and go cold. The high paced, 3 point powered offense is now stagnant with perimeter players watching Dwight with the ball in the paint. Then when we needed those long range buckets at the end, no one except Dwight was in any kind of rhythm. Somewhere during the 5th or 6th time in a row of running the same "down low to Howard" play, the coach should have stepped in and reminded his team of what they used to put teams in trouble the whole year. We lived and died with the long range bomb and then we abandoned the game plan all together rather than tweak it when the going got tough. All of the sudden, he tried to get his guys to play D. A team that focused solely on running teams to death now had to switch gears completely and play a defensive/half court game. Players gotta play so you can't blame everything on coaches but the gameplan was flawed from the jump and THAT you can blame on McHale.
Morey says that we will without a doubt have cap space next year to acquire another big piece. That means Lin and/or Asik are on the move. Fantasy dreaming time.... The Heat win the Championship this year. D Wade, happy with the 3peat and beat to hell, retires. The Big 3 is dismantled. Lebron opts out. In a sign and trade, the Rockets send Lin, Asik and I hate to say it, Parsons to the Heat for King James. The King, the Beard and D12 create a new dynasty. At least 3 more rings for the King. He gets his legacy cemented amongst the greatest. Houston still gets no respect. Game over. Yeah, I know, I'm dreaming almost as much as that dude thinking the Lakers are gonna win it all next year but hey, it could happen!
Dam Rockets
My Bio Page - Texas - Houston
