Why are the Rockets always getting limp in the 4th?

hackle · Post #1 » by **hackle** » Sat Mar 14, 2009 6:43 am

Why are the Rockets always getting limb in the 4th?

is it because?

1. Pre-game warm-up was too long, hurt our stamina.
2. Players think game consists of 3 quarters only, or
3. Players think mid-game is the 3rd quarter, so they played very hard in the locker room.

so what is it? :-?

[p.s. editing note: sorry guys, I mean limp, not limb]

HTown_TMac · Post #2 » by **HTown_TMac** » Sat Mar 14, 2009 7:03 am

Mental, and that is crunch time, so other teams defense intensifies and our offense becomes find a open shot if we cant get Yao the ball.. No plays seem to be ran.

hackle · Post #3 » by **hackle** » Sat Mar 14, 2009 7:07 am

HTown_TMac wrote:Mental, and that is crunch time, so other teams defense intensifies and our offense becomes find a open shot if we cant get Yao the ball.. No plays seem to be ran.

dude, i mean SERIOUSLY 8-)

HTown_TMac · Post #4 » by **HTown_TMac** » Sat Mar 14, 2009 7:09 am

Seriously? Blame Tracy.

hackle · Post #5 » by **hackle** » Sat Mar 14, 2009 7:12 am

I kinda miss rafer.

tisbee · Post #6 » by **tisbee** » Sat Mar 14, 2009 7:18 am

Hackle,
Much of it has to do w/injuries. The current starting 5 have not had alot of practice time together so under pressure they default to their own individual strengths. Playing one against 5 rarely succeeds and they are not a unit. Battier was out til Jan,Artest was in and out of lineup thru Feb,Brooks has been the starter for a short while. Of the bench,Landry has missed quite a few games,and Lowry is new. W/the Rockets schedule having so many games clumped together,a problem that crops up can go unaddressed for several games in a row.

Then there's the theory of Adelman's offense. It is based on spacing and crisp movement. But in the 4Q the refs tend to swallow their whistle,allowing much more physical contact and bogging down the offense. In the past Adelman would rely on Drexler,Webber,McGrady to take over in 4Q and bail the team out. The current Rockets don't have that kind of player. But the problem w/this excuse is the Rockets aren't coming close to running an Adelman offense in the first place.

Partly,it's an identity problem. What are the Rockets on offense? What is their bread and butter play that they run when they need a basket? They don't have one,so they flail around trying to get decent shots when the defensive intensity is turned up by the other team.

Mostly though,it's the makeup of the team. Their PGs are young and don't know how to run the team yet. They lack that rebounder who will get THE crucial rebound when a game is up for grabs. The team doesn't have a tall player who can block shots from the weakside and kill the other team's momemtum. They don't have forwards who can run and finish above the rim when they get a turnover,so they rarely take advantage of steals,deflections,etc and create momentum for themselves. They don't have anybody on the starting unit who knows how to drive and get fouled. So they never get any easy points,everything is hard,each miss is magnified,every opponents' basket that much bigger.

The Rockets are a team that has little margin for error. When the other team turns up the pressure the errors creep in and the Rockets struggle.

hackle · Post #7 » by **hackle** » Sat Mar 14, 2009 7:41 am

woo thanks tisbee, that's a good post.

kz1m9w · Post #8 » by **kz1m9w** » Sat Mar 14, 2009 5:26 pm

While I do think its frustrating and obviously not ideal, I also think its one of the most over analyzed issues of this Rockets team and frankly not the end of the world.

My thought is that this issue (4th quarter collapses) is every bit a product of this Rockets team being good enough to carve out a lead in almost every 4th quarter. And given this is basketball (the NBA no less), comebacks are the norm, not the exception.

Ask a fan of one of the leagues' doormats and you'll find out they would love to enjoy a 4th quarter lead - often a significant one - in almost every single game played.

Again, yes, it would be even better if this team didn't have an penchant for blowing those leads regularly - only a handful of teams can make claim to that and even they sometimes do the same thing - but it could be way worse. And the last time I checked, they do have a healthy winning percentage. The word successful comes to mind.

Just my perspective.

Iggyemu · Post #9 » by **Iggyemu** » Sat Mar 14, 2009 6:17 pm

kz1m9w wrote:While I do think its frustrating and obviously not ideal, I also think its one of the most over analyzed issues of this Rockets team and frankly not the end of the world.

See the issue with this type of thinking is that you are a person that is content with being a good regular season team.

The issue is more along the lines of what tisbee said. Its injuries yes....but even more important than that is that we don't have 1 single play we can run to get a good shot down the stretch of games. That might be good in regular season games b/c maybe we blow teams out or the teams we are playing like the Bobcats for example...are just not good enough to take advantage of that...

But in the playoffs....games will be closer and the team that executes in the last 5mins of the 4th quarter will win. Is it over analyzed? Only if you are a loser and think that just being good in the regular season is good enough.

BaYBaller · Post #10 » by **BaYBaller** » Sat Mar 14, 2009 8:18 pm

Because we have no closer. I thought that was obvious to everybody. Artest wants to be the closer but he just doesn't have the speed or the ball handling to do it. The only person right now who could possibly do it is Brooks because he has the speed to break down a defense. Adelman knows it too, that's why he's been trying to run plays for Brooks during crunch time (with mixed success). Whether people realize it or not Brooks growth this season is going to have major implications on just how far this team can go in the playoffs.

highrangeslang · Post #11 » by **highrangeslang** » Sat Mar 14, 2009 8:43 pm

This has been the Rockets problem for years. I really don't know why they do this, and how it's possible that they haven't improved. It's just the spirit of the team, I guess.

I thought it would change after they got a new coach, but I guess not.

tisbee · Post #12 » by **tisbee** » Sat Mar 14, 2009 11:06 pm

highrangeslang,
I'd argue that the problem past Rocket teams had was a lack of a veteran true PG. At start of 4Q when the other team tries to make a run,the Rockets have lacked a steady hand at the point who would know how to run the clock,get the team in the right sets and make sure the right scorer gets the ball in his favored area. Instead they've gone w/assorted scoring pg types who look for their shot more than running the offense.
Secondly,the team has had a pretty poor bench for the McGrady/Yao era. There wasn't anybody who could create his own shot or could go on a tear and bury a team w/several quick baskets. When a Luther Head is your primary scoring option off the bench,you're going to have problems.

kz1m9w · Post #13 » by **kz1m9w** » Sun Mar 15, 2009 2:45 am

Iggyemu wrote:
kz1m9w wrote:While I do think its frustrating and obviously not ideal, I also think its one of the most over analyzed issues of this Rockets team and frankly not the end of the world.

See the issue with this type of thinking is that you are a person that is content with being a good regular season team.

The issue is more along the lines of what tisbee said. Its injuries yes....but even more important than that is that we don't have 1 single play we can run to get a good shot down the stretch of games. That might be good in regular season games b/c maybe we blow teams out or the teams we are playing like the Bobcats for example...are just not good enough to take advantage of that...

But in the playoffs....games will be closer and the team that executes in the last 5mins of the 4th quarter will win. Is it over analyzed? Only if you are a loser and think that just being good in the regular season is good enough.

I disagree. Your correlation is typical and I think someday you'll understand that this game is not life or death - and it doesn't make you a loser to appreciate a team that while is certainly not the best in the league, is definitely above average and should be appreciated for what it is.

You don't have to whine and cry about a team that is 20 games over .500 to be a winner. And it also doesn't mean you don't wish for playoff success, you just don't have to necessarily let a pro basketball team's success in the playoffs be so important that you can't realize that being ahead at any point of the game by a significant margin is indeed a good thing, whether it be in the regular season or in the playoffs. As I stated, its not ideal to blow big leads and it is an issue that as a fan I hope gets solved. But not being able to see the positive in it is narrow in my opinion.

So your label of "loser" is expected. Labels that come to mind that may be more applicable is short-sided and/or presumptuous about what makes a person a "loser". Again, I think you'll probably understand it better at some point in your life - hopefully by the time your raising teenagers or later. But in the meantime, I hope it makes you feel better to imply someone is a loser because they are not quite as short-sided as you are.

Guy986 · Post #14 » by **Guy986** » Sun Mar 15, 2009 3:02 am

The answer is simple. This team doesn't have a closer.

smapor · Post #15 » by **smapor** » Sun Mar 15, 2009 3:52 pm

Guy986 wrote:The answer is simple. This team doesn't have a closer.

i sort of agree, however I think the answer is....we don't have any bread and butter plays like other TOP teams do.

We used to have T-mac and Yao with the pick and roll.

Now we have Artest for 3, AB for 3 or they pass to Yao for some horrible shooting attempt with 2 seconds left on the shot clock, for Artest he simply doesn't pass.

T-Wack · Post #16 » by **T-Wack** » Sun Mar 15, 2009 4:18 pm

When he was healthy, McGrady was this teams viagra in the fourth. With Yao as the go-to guy, we will continue to go flacid. MoRon Artest is too stupid, and Brooks too inexperienced, so we have no legitimate option down the stretch.

PocketRockets · Post #17 » by **PocketRockets** » Sun Mar 15, 2009 6:52 pm

It's getting there though b/c the way Brooks was playing at the end of the game yesterday (aggression-wise) was sweet. He was taking TP and tim duncan to the rim until one of those later possession when he got hung by the backboard. W/ time he'll learn to keep his dribble alive or to take one extra dribble to actually make it to the other side of the hoop for the reverse layup. It took TP a couple of seasons to gain his team's confidence, get through his mistakes, and succeed. Now TP is consistently at the top of the league in points in the paint and he's a freakin PG! Not trying to compare brooks to TP b/c I don't think their games are that much alike but you cant deny their speed. We saw it against shaq and yesterday for a couple possessions against Tim duncan. Brooks will learn (after some failures) when to pass and when to just turn it up and get to the rim.

Brooks gets fouled a lot too but calls will come with time.

Now Ron needs to camp out on the block and the guards don't need to give it to him unless he's on the block in the fourth quarter. He's become like tmac and just relied on his broke shot. He needs to utilize his size and pound that pink.

smapor · Post #18 » by **smapor** » Sun Mar 15, 2009 8:10 pm

PocketRockets wrote:It's getting there though b/c the way Brooks was playing at the end of the game yesterday (aggression-wise) was sweet. He was taking TP and tim duncan to the rim until one of those later possession when he got hung by the backboard. W/ time he'll learn to keep his dribble alive or to take one extra dribble to actually make it to the other side of the hoop for the reverse layup. It took TP a couple of seasons to gain his team's confidence, get through his mistakes, and succeed. Now TP is consistently at the top of the league in points in the paint and he's a freakin PG! Not trying to compare brooks to TP b/c I don't think their games are that much alike but you cant deny their speed. We saw it against shaq and yesterday for a couple possessions against Tim duncan. Brooks will learn (after some failures) when to pass and when to just turn it up and get to the rim.

Brooks gets fouled a lot too but calls will come with time.

Now Ron needs to camp out on the block and the guards don't need to give it to him unless he's on the block in the fourth quarter. He's become like tmac and just relied on his broke shot. He needs to utilize his size and pound that pink.

TP was a far better passer than AB (when TP was inexperience) and TP also knew back than he needed to get his big man involved.

AB hesitants on the pass to Yao, if Rafer never had an isssue, AB shouldn't have any excuses. The only good pass he makes is to ARtest who sits 10 feet behind the 3 point line.

AI2TOHOUSTON · Post #19 » by **AI2TOHOUSTON** » Mon Mar 16, 2009 8:48 pm

We suck in the 4th b/c we don't play our game. Artest plays in the 4th just like how Francis used to regularly. T- whatever was our best player in crunch time.

Boredagain · Post #20 » by **Boredagain** » Mon Mar 16, 2009 9:49 pm

I guess clutch city really doesn't suit us..