- 2 days ago
ITL reacts to another frustrating Rockets loss and discusses why this one might have been even worse than the previous game.
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00:00Obviously, things to keep the spirits high.
00:02Because if you're watching Rockets basketball for that,
00:04it might be a little tough.
00:06Might be.
00:07Might be.
00:08We've got a lot of Texans to cover today,
00:09but it's funny with the Rockets because I've almost come to expect this now.
00:15That's a bad sign.
00:17Sean and I were talking about it before the show.
00:21Is it every week, though?
00:22Yeah.
00:22I held off from betting against the Rockets last night
00:26because I don't bet against my team,
00:27but I was never more tempted to bet against the Rockets
00:31on a back-to-back, traveling on the road, into altitude,
00:35against a good team.
00:37Checked all the boxes, and they lost by 36.
00:40That is correct.
00:41They cost you money.
00:41That's what I'm expecting.
00:43Thank you, Andre.
00:44I mean, if you wanted to look for a positive in it,
00:48Kevin Durant didn't play 47 minutes like he always does.
00:5026 minutes, eight shots.
00:52Right?
00:53Eight shots when you're trying to find some offense.
00:54That was one of the telling things of this game.
00:57There were some telling things in this game versus the Denver Nuggets
01:01in which they lost a lot to a little.
01:02That is the official score of it.
01:04Actually, 129-93 was the final.
01:08And that was one of the telling things is the teams that are really good.
01:11This wasn't just losing to a good team.
01:13It's that the teams that are really good can take Kevin Durant out of a game,
01:16and that's really, really scary when you remember that the rest of everybody else,
01:20nobody's really good at getting their own.
01:22No, my thing, yes, I agree with you.
01:24But my thing that just jumped off for me was you can start to see,
01:29well, the Nuggets made a ton of shots, and they did.
01:33Why?
01:34Why did they make a ton of shots?
01:36You know, it's the same question I asked after the Spurs.
01:39By the way, they give up in between, you know, they beat the Raptors, which,
01:43whatever, I think they're in the middle of the pack there in the east,
01:46but they gave up 145 and then 129 defensively.
01:50We'll get to the defense in a little bit.
01:52You know, well, actually right here because.
01:55That is a little bit technically correct.
01:57That is a little bit.
01:58Just two seconds was all it took for me to get to the defense.
02:00You know, you talk about the open shots that the Spurs were getting,
02:04the open shots that the Nuggets were getting.
02:07Why?
02:08It's because the defense, and I said this and I was kind of reluctant to say it
02:12because it's really a bad thing to say about a team,
02:14but it looked the same last night.
02:15Not just them looking as if they're checked out on various possessions
02:20or not playing, you know, with the intensity and the quickness
02:24that they need to, but also getting got, speaking of the question of the day,
02:29by a guard that was just going, head down, I'm going to the basket,
02:32I'm going to turn this corner, and then things are going to open up.
02:35That's two games now, man, and I think I mentioned it before.
02:39They've given up over 115 points or more.
02:43I want to say now it's six out of nine games.
02:45No, no, five out of eight games.
02:48115 or more.
02:49Yeah.
02:50And a lot of these are the teams that you look at that you go,
02:53oh, that's a tough team, right?
02:54Denver on the road, second night of a back-to-back traveling.
02:57I can get that to some extent, but also that's frustrating, right?
03:02The San Antonio Spurs in San Antonio, that was another one.
03:06The Golden State Warriors, that was an overtime game at home,
03:09but that's also in there.
03:11Miami on the road.
03:12You're sensing a theme there.
03:14The teams that they played that are even, like, average to better.
03:17And this was something I remember when you were out, Paul was in,
03:21and we were talking about coming out of the All-Star break,
03:24was this is going to be an interesting stretch because there's winnable games,
03:28and it feels like they've won those games,
03:30but then the ones against the teams that really are competitive end up being
03:35losses or end up at least being really tough games to get over.
03:40And to some degree, that's expected, right, just generally,
03:43but it should not be every single one of these that feels like it goes this way.
03:47And I think it's starting to feel consequential in the way of,
03:50what does this tell you about their capability of being a winner?
03:53Yeah.
03:54Right?
03:55And that feels frustrating.
03:56I will say, though, in watching this game, I stopped and I was like,
04:01how does this team look different than they once were?
04:03Because, you know me, I started digging into numbers,
04:05and since, like, February, their offensive rating is in the pits.
04:12Their defensive rating is middling in the league.
04:15And it's weird because if you just looked at the full season,
04:18they're still about top 10 in offense, top 10 in defense.
04:22So you go, this is still a good offense.
04:23It has plummeted in the last month or two on the back end.
04:27I'm like, what's so different?
04:28So I went back and watched.
04:29And what's funny, I was like,
04:30I want to watch a game from, like, December or something
04:32and see what the difference is.
04:34I went back, and funny enough, December 15th,
04:38they play the Denver Nuggets on the road.
04:40So I was like.
04:40They won that game.
04:41No, they didn't.
04:42They didn't?
04:42They didn't, but it was close.
04:43It was like 128, 125 overtime game, right?
04:46This was, but at least it was close.
04:47So I went and I, I'm a sicko.
04:49I played both of these games side-by-side and watched them simultaneously.
04:53You are a sick person.
04:54That is very sick behavior.
04:55What is wrong with you, man?
04:56I have never walked away from these allegations.
04:58I agree with Figge.
04:59What's wrong with you?
04:59Honestly, how could you pay attention to both of them at the same time?
05:02Very, very carefully.
05:04Very carefully.
05:05And what, you know what's crazy is maybe there's small differences in, like,
05:09early in the game you could see the energy that the offense had, right?
05:13The way that the ball could skip around a little bit more.
05:15Especially on defense, you could see the rotations.
05:17And maybe you go second night back-to-back traveling.
05:20Ultimately, the game looked similar, which maybe points you to the idea that this is,
05:26if you want to try and wipe this away, you could just go, they missed a boatload of shots.
05:30Okay, I'm glad you mentioned that.
05:31I'm glad you mentioned that.
05:33First of all, one of the reasons they look similar is because they were.
05:36It was still the Rockets and the Nuggets in both games.
05:39You know, these look kind of the same.
05:40Okay, I'm just kidding.
05:42No, but here's the thing, right?
05:43Over the course of three months.
05:46No, I know.
05:46You haven't seen really any changes.
05:49And this is a team that, if there was other teams that you'd go, they were just kind of
05:53steadying themselves for the end of the season.
05:55Cool.
05:55This is a Rockets team that in December, we're like, hopefully they figure some things out
05:58to make themselves better.
05:59They're the same basketball team.
06:00Okay, I hesitate to say this because you're probably going to have both screens side-by-side
06:05shortly after the show today.
06:06Looking for this?
06:07I can do it during the show.
06:08Looking for this.
06:09What, you got my capabilities?
06:10Here's where I think we turn to offense and why they're, I forget how you put it, but
06:15you know, the dregs basically right now in recent games.
06:20Once again, much like the Spurs, and this is something that everybody's going to do because,
06:24you know, the book is being written on how to stop this Rockets offense other than them
06:29stopping themselves.
06:29Because it's easy to say, well, they missed a ton of shots.
06:31And they missed a ton of shots yesterday.
06:34I think 44% from the field.
06:3743% from the field.
06:38The thing that was the most sick is that they were 12% from three.
06:41Yeah.
06:41Which gives us.
06:42Four for 32 or something like that.
06:44What is the day, what is the day in Rockets history that you think they had the worst three
06:49point shooting day?
06:50What comes to mind immediately?
06:52Oh, you're talking about all time?
06:53The playoff game.
06:54Right?
06:54Where they miss how many three pointers in a row?
06:57That game, they shot 16% from three.
07:00Last night was 12.
07:01Correct.
07:01Right.
07:02And so, I'm glad you talked about the shooting.
07:04Oh, it was just a bad shooting night.
07:05I'm going to say the same thing.
07:07Why?
07:08Because the Spurs, what they were able to do with the Rockets is disrupt the perimeter.
07:14You know?
07:14And I'm just using my naked eye here.
07:17I'm not going to dig into numbers like you do.
07:19That's what we have you for.
07:21That's why you're here.
07:23But just from my watching this game, they were really good at disrupting the perimeter,
07:27making sure the ball eventually got, you know, there were no open shots in the perimeter,
07:32eventually got to Shingun, and it was late in the shot clock.
07:36And I would love to know how often they were, let's say, four seconds or less, five seconds
07:42or less in the shot clock with Shingun still trying to find an opening or a shot versus
07:46earlier in the year.
07:47Because they, I've kind of called him a black hole at some point.
07:50It's really not always his fault because they get the ball to him late.
07:53He kind of gets lost or whatever.
07:55So the offense, that leads to a lot of contested or bad shots or rushed shots.
08:00And so, yes, they were bad from the field.
08:03Why?
08:03Because teams are starting to figure out this often.
08:06There was one play, and I'm sure you remember the exact circumstance, where the Rockets were
08:12down like by, I think it was 82-63, if I'm remembering it right.
08:17They were down big.
08:18It was a big lead.
08:20Imei calls timeout.
08:22They come out of the timeout, and this is the play they run.
08:25They get the ball to reach Shepard, and he dribbles on the outside until he just flailingly
08:30throws it at the end of the shot clock to the left 45, and they get a bad shot off.
08:36That's the play out of a shot clock in a must-have bucket situation.
08:41So it's the approach, it's the offense, and it's how defenses are now forcing them to get
08:47laid into shot clocks.
08:48And the thing that's kind of wild to me is that with all that being the case, right,
08:54and with this game being fully out of hand after letting the Denver Nuggets go crazy in
08:59the third quarter, you look up and you go, these teams damn near have the same record.
09:0340-25 for the Rockets, 40-26 for the Nuggets.
09:06And you look at the standings, and there's four teams rating from third place to sixth place
09:13that damn near have the same record. And you look at them, and they're all similar teams
09:18in that you've looked at all of them. And that includes the Nuggets, obviously your Rockets,
09:22that includes the Minnesota Timberwolves as well, and the Los Angeles Lakers, where you
09:26looked at them at some point this season, you go, nah, this ain't a contender.
09:29And so, I don't know, how does, I'm trying to figure out, and maybe we'll circle back around
09:34to this in this program, how I feel about the Rockets, because I see it.
09:37All the people on the text line, worst three seed in history, zero interest. It's clearly,
09:42I've used the word frustrating talking about this team a number of times, and yet I keep
09:46looking at them in comparison to the rest of the league, and I go, they're not crazy far
09:50away from, at least statistically and in the standings, from being in a place that is manageable
09:58if you figure something out. And so, I don't know how to make those things die, but I keep
10:03looking up at this team, and when I watch them play basketball, I'm frustrated.
10:06Well, there are three teams essentially tied for the number three seed in the West. The
10:13Rockets are also just two games out of the play-in game. I mean, it's that close after
10:17the top two teams in the West, so it could break either way, and right now it's just not
10:21breaking, they're not playing the kind of basketball that would make you feel they're
10:24going to end up as a three seed.
10:26Now, one of the big differences in that game in December versus this game, no Stephen Adams,
10:34and I go, is that the difference here?
10:37It's a big difference.
10:38Like, is that really the difference? Is this just the guys had to slide out of positions
10:43that you felt comfortable?
10:44It is a factor. We have to be fair here.
10:46It is a factor, but I'm like, is that really the difference between a game where you have,
10:50you go, the Rockets went off in the third quarter in that game in December.
10:54Complete opposite in this one. And it's one of those things where I'm like, is this a slide
11:01for the Rockets, or is this them falling off a cliff, and is that going to lead to an offseason
11:05where we have even bigger questions to ask than the last offseason, which I didn't think
11:09would be possible.
11:09Yeah.
11:10Yeah.
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