To all who watched last night's HOU/PHX game: Do Not Blame the Referees

I just blame them for messing up the flow of the game. The first half was great, everything was flowing well for the Rockets. The second half….well the refs decided to swallow the whistle for a while then go crazy with it after.

It was ugly to watch the second half. I bunch of bad calls both ways, sloppy play, and no flow. I think that was the big disadvantage for the Rockets.

Who also said Steve Nash should have been better than Lowry??? And to quote myself from the preview post.

Im worried about Hill and Carter. One of them two is going to have a great game.

I guess it was Carter last night shooting lights out and carrying the team on his back when they needed him the most. Adelman should have taken Martin out and put Lee on him much sooner.

Also, does everyone now agree the Dragic trade was a good one??? LOL. Goran raped Brooks last night! Steals, drawing fouls, behind the back pass for a dunk….what else could you have asked for?

There’s not a damn thing in this article I disagree with. Time to this fan base to man up and accept that the playoffs won’t toughen a mediocre roster. The best option is to develop the youth, take a good hard look at who is worth keeping on the roster for the rebuilding effort, and see if we can’t accelerate some development in the good ones.

I do still have faith in Jordan Hill mostly because in his limited minutes he has played the post game that is asked of him but the more I see him the more I think he needs to be a bench guy to develop himself well.

Ken Mauer is not a ref you want to get started. He has issues and you need to know how to avoid getting on his bad side.
That said, I think the one thing missing in this evaluation is Scola. Anyone thinking we should move him needs to remember this game. It is hard to put what he does into words, but last night was a great example of why we are better with him than without him.

Was Kevin Martin high? His reaction time was equivalent to a stoner’s.

“And we’ll never know what we have with Hasheem Thabeet until someone gives him a legitimate chance to play meaningful basketball against the big boys.”

Unfortunately, I suspect Adelman knows from watching him in practice what we have in Thabeet. Does Adelman really have to give him minutes just so we can see how bad he sucks? Judging from his time in Memphis, it’s pretty clear that he currently has absolutely no skills offensively. Defensively, he struggles with pretty much everything except shot blocking. He’s not a lost cause- just not a player who should be getting minutes in any game the Rockets have any intention of winning.

but I watched the highlights, including a youtube video of Brad Miller’s 30 seconds of what-the-hell. Usually I’d get enraged at those kinds of plays to blow the game, but… I wasn’t even mad, I was just incredulous. That really happened?

I even tweeted it in the closing minutes of last nights game. You can’t put this one on the refs. Sure, they made bad calls but they made them on both sides. No, the refs didn’t allow Vince Carter to do the Time Warp to 1999 or let Warrick look like Kobe-Lite. You aren’t going to win when those two guys are shooting 70%.

If the Suns make the post season then we get their first pick. If not then we get Orlando’s. If we both make it to the playoffs and NYK has a worse record than our we get to switch. We could make noise in the draft with 3 picks in good spots.

1. Dunno. Bad game from getting player of the week. Part of it was that he wasn’t getting the calls he usually does, which is frustrating, but not much you can about it. Also, that wrist problem does not seem to be helping.

2. I’m guessing Hill started to avoid disrupting the bench rotations – just like DeShawn Stevenson starts in Dallas even though Terry is about 9388 times better. Really, who starts doesn’t matter, who finishes the game does And Patterson was in the game at the end.
And that’s ignoring the claim that Hayes is more than a situational player, which I don’t agree with at all. He’s a bad matchup against players who don’t create for themselves but just rebound or catch passes from the best passing PG in the league, but he’s incredibly useful and valuable to this team. I really wouldn’t have a problem dumping giving him 5 million+ for a couple of years next season.
3. Massively disagree on Miller, as outside those plays at the end, he really didn’t have a bad game. Phoenix did a very good job cutting off the passes that he normally makes, and he had a few good jumpers. This offense massively, massively uses the high post a lot, a center who at minimum has to know what the f is happening on offense, especially since last night we couldn’t just dump the ball to Scola and tell him to tango.

I will be quite blunt in saying that I genuinely do not care about Thabeet, especially for this year, and especially because I think development for the last 15 games is pointless especially since our playoff hopes are not dead yet. ( And you play to win the game, and this is what a winner like Rick Adelman will do. Otherwise, watch Kurt Rambis. I do that enough to see that I do not want to see that here). Thabeet’s chance will be in the summer and in training camps next season. Right now, as far as I am concerned, he has the playing value of Cook.

Give the guy a break.

Not there fault they do have a tough job the game last nite was fast and they couldnt keep up thats all.

But dealin with the whole playin young guys is really startin to annoy me. The old guys are miller, scola, martin and i think hayes and lowry are around the same age? Everyone else is young and is getting time.

cannot continue to keep playing the Hayes/Miller duo when you might possible have an actual center on your bench

That is one big might. Thabeet clearly is not ready to play or not good enough as judged by rack and all the coaching staff. Even if they are wrong he wont get playing time till the end of the season so can we drop it? Please? On the other side of the coin i think TWill should maybe get a few mins a game at least coz Bud is playin too many mins for my liking even tho hes doin well.

exciting game to watch tho feel bad for brooks i liked him ha

One thing is for certain: Thabeet wouldn’t have thrown an outlet pass to the other team with 20 seconds left in the game and the Rockets within striking distance.

Ok, maybe not, but he would likely dribble it off his foot or travel with it. Your constant hate for Miller is getting a bit annoying, especially since he’s played pretty well this season. He’s putting up 15, 9 and 5.6 per 40 minutes, is the best passing big on the team (even better than Chuck), and while not a good defender, is decent against other slow big centers. Have you even seen Thabeet play? Yes, he’s 7’3", but he’s done absolutely nothing at all to merit any playing time anywhere. You think that just because he’s really tall that his glaring lack of strength, his inability to catch anything, and complete and utter lack of basketball IQ doesn’t matter. It’s not like Adelman has a vendetta against the guy, he just isn’t good at basketball.

I also don’t buy the argument that he was in a bad situation in Memphis. He was given every opportunity to earn significant minutes the last 2 years, and has been completely unable to do so. The coaches watch practice and see him, it’s not like because he hasn’t played nobody knows anything about him.

At this point, you know what miller can do, and who he is.

I firmly believe thabeet is worthless, but what the hell do I know

We aren’t going to the playoffs, so he should be playing 15-20 minutes a game from here on. Have to see if he can give you ANYTHING, and if not, we can move on sooner or later.

By looking at two scenarios for Adelman.

1. If Adelman leaves. If Adelman is planning to head out at the end of last year, why should he be more interested in developing players as opposed to attempting to make the playoffs one final time. He wants to win, and I don’t think he would want to end his career just tanking and throwing out Thabeet in the name of development.
2. If Adelman stays. The Adelman offense, more than basically any other, requires a center who knows what the heck is going on in the offense, where the cuts are, what the plays are, etc. etc. Hayes can do this. Miller can do this. Hill demonstrated when he was starting that he has no concept of this whatsoever, which was one reason why we were so goddamn awful when he was starting. Thabeet’s basketball IQ, from virtually every single report we’ve seen out there, is even worse than Hill’s.
The greatest development that would be possible for Hasheem Thabeet is knowledge. Knowledge of plays, knowledge of what players like to do, etc. etc. This is not knowledge that can be easily picked up in the chaos of a game, if at all. This is something which you need practices for, scrimmages, training camps and such. If your response is “well, what about defense?”, Thabeet needs a lot of work on defense that has nothing to do with playing the game. He has to get stronger, he has to actually know how to play defense, which is more than just waving your arms as Chuck Hayes proves.

Bottom line is I sincerely believe that throwing Thabeet out there, when he has no knowledge of Rockets basketball, will accomplish jack. We’ll be worse out there as the offense will stagnate, he won’t develop much if at all, and we’ll just piss off players like Scola and Hayes whom would actually want to win. If you’re planning to tank for a high pick and completely dump the vets, great strategy. We’re not.