Houston's small-ball approach is intriguing

HurricaneDij39 said:

If Denver falls to #4 (a distinct possibility), Jokic's play in a potential series with them will be everything. As far as I'm concerned it will either play to our major advantage or be our worst nightmare. Probably not a whole lot of middle ground.

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trojanfan12 said:

Unless they get some very favorable matchups, I don't think the Rockets can do that enough to get past the 2nd round.

Works pretty well on a Tuesday or Wednesday night in regular season games. But in the playoffs, they'll be facing better teams with time to focus specifically on coming up with a gameplan to beat them.

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trojanfan12 said:

Yep. The problem with the small ball lineup is that they have to be able to hit consistently enough from the perimeter to win 4/7 in the playoffs when the pace slows and the refs swallow their whistles more.

Unless they get some very favorable matchups, I don't think the Rockets can do that enough to get past the 2nd round.

Works pretty well on a Tuesday or Wednesday night in regular season games. But in the playoffs, they'll be facing better teams with time to focus specifically on coming up with a gameplan to beat them.

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True Lakers Fan said:

The Dallas Mavericks is the only team in the last 30 years that i know of that won a title without playing defense, so i just dont see Houston getting to the finals

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tlance said:

LOL.

That Maverick team was very good defensively.

Jason Kidd, Tyson Chandler, Shawn Marion, Grant Hill. They were old, but they could all defend.

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tlance said:

LOL.

That Maverick team was very good defensively.

Jason Kidd, Tyson Chandler, Shawn Marion, Grant Hill. They were old, but they could all defend.

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trojanfan12 said:

Yep. The problem with the small ball lineup is that they have to be able to hit consistently enough from the perimeter to win 4/7 in the playoffs when the pace slows and the refs swallow their whistles more.

Unless they get some very favorable matchups, I don't think the Rockets can do that enough to get past the 2nd round.

Works pretty well on a Tuesday or Wednesday night in regular season games. But in the playoffs, they'll be facing better teams with time to focus specifically on coming up with a gameplan to beat them.

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True Lakers Fan said:

LOL, I have never thought of The Mavericks or The Phoenix Suns(Under DumbToni) as defensive minded teams. Id come closer to believing they played Offense first and defense second which is not a bad deal. One thing for sure is that whatever defense the Mavericks played , was far more then you will see from Houston and D'antoni

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tlance said:

That wasn’t the team that won the championship though. Very different.

That year’s team was 6th in defensive efficiency and 8th in offensive efficiency. They were nothing like the Nash led teams you are thinking of. The 2011 Mavericks were a good defensive team.

By the way, that team wasn’t even top 10 in points scored.

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True Lakers Fan said:

What I remember the best about the Mavericks team is they shot a high amount of threes that won the series.

It would have been interesting to see what Nowitzki and Nash could have done together

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tlance said:

They held the Heat to 95 or less in 5 of 6 games and under 90 twice.

While they did make some shots in that series, they won because they really bottled up LeBron.

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