Foul smell goes beyond silly hacking ploy
Since the first couple weeks of the season, Rockets general manager Daryl Morey has been trying his darnedest to trade players to reshape his roster.
And while it appeared he panicked in concluding coach Kevin McHale couldn’t figure it out, Morey at least deserves credit for realizing the team he put together wasn’t very good.
(I know that is akin to applauding someone for mopping up a floor on which they urinated, but I’m trying to be nice here.)
The Rockets have serious problems. And the only way to fix them is to start all over. Again.
The players don’t fit. The coaching message isn’t being heard, understood or implemented.
So much for building on last season’s fun playoff run, the team’s deepest in 18 years.
While some of us have been slow in recognizing the disaster that is the 2015-16 Rockets, was it really necessary for them to seek out rock bottom to catch our attention?
The Rockets have never deserved to lose more than they did Thursday night against the Detroit
Pistons.
Not even the night they played 68-year-old (or 38-year-old, I forget which) Elvin Hayes in all 53 minutes of an overtime contest in the next-to-the-last game of the 1983-84 season. The Rockets needed that loss to get into the coin flip for the right to draft Hakeem Olajuwon. Had the Rockets not lost 14 of their last 17 and nine of their last 10 games, they would have been “stuck” with Michael Jordan.
The Rockets weren’t trying to lose Thursday against the Pistons. But in trying to win, they proved to be the biggest losers.
What they did — employing the “strategy” of fouling intentionally — is such an abomination to the beautiful sport of basketball that I can’t believe we have to waste energy debating it. It isn’t basketball. It isn’t part of how the game was designed.
It isn’t part of what the sport became over the course of time, and it shouldn’t be part of what the game is today. Period.
The players were embarrassed.
The Rockets think so little of K.J. McDaniels, a 22-year-old who they have been trying to convince potential trade partners could eventually be a good NBA player, that they sent him into the game to act as a modern-day scrub.
His sole contribution was to grab Detroit’s Andre Drummond.
A fast festival of fouls
McDaniels played all of 30 seconds and, per instructions from head coach J.B. Bickerstaff, committed five fouls. Those five fouls, matching his season highs in points and rebounds, came in nine seconds of play to start the third quarter. Nine. Seconds. That is as bad as the 1960s and ’70s, when teams were accused of sending lesser players into games to start fights with opposing players.
The Rockets owe that young man an apology.
Most likely, his lasting NBA accomplishment, his legacy as an NBA player, will be that he was so useless that his only value was to commit intentional fouls.
There is no legitimate argument that a blatant intentional foul should receive the same punishment as incidental contact that occurred in the course of playing defense, but that is beside the point.
The math indicates intentional fouling can be a successful strategy — Drummond set an NBA record for missed foul shots with 23 bricks from the free-throw line — and it is particularly viable for teams that aren’t capable of winning playing real basketball.
That is what makes what happened Wednesday disconcerting for the Rockets. It worked — they outscored Detroit with Drummond misfiring — and they still lost.
Stark contrast
Last year, the Rockets were a real basketball team. Like many teams, they took advantage of the rules with silly hacking on occasion.
But the Rockets finished with the third-best record in the league and were one of the last four teams remaining in the NBA playoffs.
They had one of the top offensive weapons in the game in James Harden and one of the top defensive big men in Dwight Howard.
They still have both of those guys, but at 22-22, it’s hardly the same team.
The players are on different pages of a bad book. They talk a much better game than they deliver and simply aren’t good enough to beat even the likes of Detroit without resorting to cheap tactics.
Morey needs to split this group up now.