f4p wrote:eminence wrote:f4p wrote:
but did we (rockets) really look like phoenix? the suns were much more about pace than space, although they had the space. they tried to beat you down the court, and were willing to play someone like amare at center to accomplish that. they wanted to score before your defense got in place and they would take whatever shot came along to make that happen. obviously they still had the nash/amare PnR to fall back on but nash didn't even really seem to shoot a ton of 3's out of it, usually taking long 2's.
the rockets were a slow-paced team and cared much more about space than pace. they didn't try to beat your defense down the court, they let it get set and then just ruthlessly hunted out the biggest analytical weakness in that defense and either PnR'd or iso'd that weakness into submission, whether it was the year before cp3 got there with harden PnR's or after cp3 got there with the my turn/your turn iso strategy.
but obviously some things were similar with d'antoni leading both teams.
They only really slowed down once CP3 arrived. The Rockets played quite quickly prior to that.
1st
5th
2nd
7th
3rd
In pace the 5 Harden seasons prior to CP3.
Harden certainly did change from Nash's days in adding the PnR off the dribble 3 to his arsenal (Curry and a few others adding the shot at a similar point in time, pretty much nobody was shooting those prior).
i was really only focusing on the d'antoni years in houston when it felt like we really went all out on moreyball. i wouldn't say mchale was doing much that reminded me on d'antoni and we still had howard struggling to post up for most of those years. the only similarity was that we played pretty fast, even moreso than when we actually had d'antoni.
That's fair if you're focusing more on the CP3 years I suppose. Those Rockets (despite still having MDA) didn't play all that much like the Nash Suns outside of playing a lot of shooters (relative to era).
But yes, I do see a clear line from the MDA Suns to the McHale Rockets. Both teams tried heavily to space the floor, had a clear primary decision maker (obviously there are notable difference between Nash and Harden as players), and went quite fast. I don't have all the synergy stats available to me right now, but even the '16 Rockets who were as slow as they got under McHale led the league in transition opportunities.
