Rockets' inability to keep up with Celtics physicality led to second-half meltdown

https://www.yahoo.com/sports/rockets-inability-keep-celtics-physicality-065805598.html




Rockets' inability to keep up with Celtics physicality led to second-half meltdown








A. Sherrod Blakely,NBC Sports Boston 11 hours ago 





BOSTON -- James Harden's place among NBA's elite players is well cemented. He is a man with few peers when it comes to scoring the ball, something that has consistently had him on the league's short list of MVP contenders. 


But as talented as he has been scoring the ball, Harden still has moments when his inability to manage the game hurt not only his play but that of his team.


The 34-point, 10-assist night he had against the Boston Celtics was an afterthought to the Rockets' collapse against the Celtics, a game Boston won 99-98 after having trailed by 26 points in the second half. 


And while there was plenty of blame pie to go around after the loss, Harden's back-to-back offensive fouls in the final 7.3 seconds -- both drawn by Marcus Smart -- were absolute back-breakers for the Rockets. 


"A lot of grabbing, a lot of holding," said Harden who had a game-high eight turnovers. "How else am I supposed to get open? A guy has two arms wrapped around my whole body."


While Harden may have had a point with the first offensive foul call against him in the final 7.3 seconds -- there was a point on the play when it appeared Smart did hold him briefly -- the second offensive foul against him moments later was one of the easier calls for the officials to make with him clearly extending his off-arm knocking Smart backwards. 


Rockets coach Mike D'Antoni said he didn't believe that either offensive foul should have been called. 


But the bigger issue was the fact that his team had such a huge lead and didn't do the things in the second half that helped them build it.


"We just didn't move, we didn't push, we didn't seem like we had the necessary stuff to take it to them and we just kind of fell into them," 


D'Antoni said. "They were up on us and they were an aggressive defense and we weren't moving, and it turned the game around."



Of course, the late-game calls and non-calls will draw additional criticism from some circles due to the fact that the game was officiated by just two referees -- Tony Brothers and Gediminas Petraitis. 


The third referee, Mark Lindsay, suffered a back injury during pre-game warm-ups and was unable to participate in the nationally televised game. 


"First of all, how do you only have two officials on a national TV game," Harden said afterwards before later adding, "Like I said in the first statement it's tough; you can't have two officials in a professional game. There was a lot of no-calls that needed to be called because it changed the dynamic of the game. You got fast break points, no calls, turnovers or whatever the case may be. This is a professional game on national TV. It can't happen."


While Harden's comments may have some merit to them, it doesn't take away from the fact that the Rockets led by as many as 26 points in the second half only to squander that lead in part because of Boston's increased physical play that on many levels, was similar to what Houston did in the first half to build up a lead that stood at 62-38 at the half. 


"It was the tale of two halves and we were kind of like them in the first half and they were like us in the second," D'Antoni said. "Tough loss, but we will bounce back and see what happens next game."




bob



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James Harden: waaah

The toughness level is always amped up by Marcus Smart, and it happened last night way before drawing the two offensive fouls on Harden in the last few seconds. He sets the pace for the entire team.

BTW, was Harden complaining about only having two officials while his team was leading by 26 in the third quarter? At least D'Antoni was not whining in his recap of the game.

http://www.espn.com/video/clip?id=21910742



bob


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Whoever Dominique is, he`s a whiny byyyotch too

Harden had a nerve whining about fouls. He shot 15/15 going into the third quarter. His problem was huge, he was trying to play hero ball in the second half and shut the crowd and the players on the Celtics up.

This was one big choke by Harden. He can complain all he wants, he was taking terrible shots and they were not going in. You are right, at least D'Antoni didn't whine and that is one of his big traits. Look at that foul they called on Larkin, NOW THAT WAS ONE BRAD COULD HAVE GONE NUTS ON. But, he is on class act, what goes around, comes around.

This game was a major note to the rest of the Western division. You may not have to worry as much about Houston as everyone thinks. I know Paul was out, but, this was and will forever be called THE BIG CHOKE to me

Houston looked like crap tonite vs Wizards, no defense at all.

Chris Paul suddenly looks very slow.

The league issued its report on the final two minutes and both offensive fouls on Harden were correct. But.....are you ready for this...
They missed "several" travelling calls on the Celtics during those two minutes. Are they serious????? Harden travels almost every shot he takes!!!

The elephant in the NBA room is the refs. I am very sympathetic to conspiratorial thinking for that one. Everyone seems to agree they are incompetent. Looking at just two minutes doesn't explain the entirety of the incompetence.

The league is talking down to us. They are saying there is nothing to see here, move along.

Some of it is very hard to explain, like the Ewing draft lottery with a creased corner. Or Sacramento-Lakers 2002. What was that?

Maybe there is too much patronage. These are the best referees in the world? Remember Tim Duncan getting tossed for smiling? I remember Rasheed Wallace was targeted. So he was a little emotional at times? It got weird, imho, like this late night post.

I watched that game from way back live one of the ones Tim Donaghy mentioned. I think it was against Philly. Tommy was out of control screaming, "You're gonna call that a hard foul? That's ridiculous."

The other sports never get spun as professional wrestling.

It could just be incompetence. Donaghy doesn't have the credibility of the vindicated Canseco. They should have five athletic, young refs who study it as an art form. I'd also get rid of thetwo steps allowed. It should be one and a half with no excessive palming. The pure game in itself is what matters. Boston fans are very knowledgeable. They showed it last night. They were all on top of the ref situation. Smart was excellent, but the crowd gets the Tommy Award.

Marcus did flop, but it's a weird psychology to the game. Why couldn't they be both fouls and a flops all in one? They all know they're on t.v.. I love the Skip Bayless part. He nailed it. I hate the star system. Let me control the league as a dictatorship and I'll fix it. But it'll never happen. Bayless. He used to call Kevin Garnett, GarNot. I guess his analysis of Harden was a blind squirrel finding an acorn.

RosalieTCeltics wrote:The league issued its report on the final two minutes and both offensive fouls on Harden were correct. But.....are you ready for this...
They missed "several" travelling calls on the Celtics during those two minutes.  Are they serious????? Harden travels almost every shot he takes!!!

If they are going to review the final 2 minutes, why not the whole game? How about when Larkin was thrown to the floor and they called the foul on him?

My thoughts exactly. This is foolishness. And as far as Smart flopping, Harden is to blame, he thought he could get away with anything, but he came up against a "Smarter" player.

The reason why they review the last 2 minutes and not the whole game is because the assumption is that any blown fouls (whistles that weren't blown or ones that were wrongly) earlier than 2 minutes have the time to be reversed or gotten past, either with makeup calls or the aggrieved team just playing hard and overcoming adversity.  With less than 2 minutes you don't have all the opportunities to fix it.

And, in the interest of precision, a flop requires that there is no contact.  When a player, and Smart certainly does this a lot, throws himself backwards as if he was hit and there was no contact, that is a flop and the league fines players for doing that.  If there is contact and one of the player exaggerates the contact to make sure it is noticed that is "selling the foul".  Mere semantics?  Perhaps, significant ones in my opinion.  Acting like you got hit hard in the head when there was zero contact is an atrocity.  Acting like you got hit hard in the head when you were, in fact, hit in the head has some basis in truth.  James Harden driving to the hoop, getting some contact and then doing his head jerk, is selling the contact but not a flop.

The replays, and the league 2-minute report, clearly show that Smart sold the contact but did not flop.  In both instances there was clear contact. In the first call Harden pushed him off with his left arm.  Did he push hard enough to knock Smart down?  Probably not, but Smart was entitled to his spot on the floor too and doesn't have to move his feet to get out of Harden's way.  In the case of the 2nd foul that was pure stupidity by James Harden.  Ref Tony Brothers came over and told him to settle down before he handed the ball for inbounding.  Harden then proceeded to walk straight into Smart until Smart sold it by falling backwards.


bob



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How about giving each team 2-3 challenges per game.

What`s the difference? if they are not going to change the call post-game ( which I certainly don`t advocate) , it doesn`t matter whether the bad call came early or late. They are just giving the losing team the  opportunity to blame the refs and not take responsibility for losing. The BS foul call on a shot that Baynes blocked in , I think , the 3rd quarter, cost the Celtics 4 points, two on the bogus foul and two on techs against Morris and Stevens. Admittedly, techs are on the people who draw them, but the refs were in the middle of a spate of bad calls against the home team. This last two minutes review business is , imo, complete nonsense.

This seems to be the one topic which has the most consensus. Discussing opinions on players would be the opposite, for example Rondo, Smart and Olynyk can get a bit nutty.

2002 Lakers-Sacramento to the side, I agree with two major points from above.

I agree with Bob. As long as there is contact, flopping is technically impossible. Yeah, it's called selling the foul.

I agree with jrleftfoot that just looking over the last two minutes proves nothing and actually minimizes the idea that NBA refereeing is broken in general.

I put up with it because the Celtics are great or on their way. I started getting bored with the last couple Pierce/KG years, but I've been all in since Brad arrived.

It might have been the Bucks game where the player went out of bounds in the last seconds but the hoop still counted. The ref was looking at player bodies, the Greek Freak? and the defenders waiting for him at the rim.

So I also agree with dboss on the idea of coaching challenges. I don't understand how a guy can go out of bounds and it was never reviewed. I only glanced at the story and sorry I don't have more precise info.

I sense corruption. The star system was or is still real. I saw Houston making many illegal moving picks. I call for no excessive palming. I'm not saying dribble like it's 1955. I watched a video of Golden State showing them making some of the most blatant moving picks with no calls, and that's how they got a lot of open shots.

If I was a fan in a city with bad ownership and a lousy team, I might not be watching any basketball at all.

Well, if that is the case, half of us here would have been long gone. We have sat thru some of the worst seasons, terrible coaching, awful playing, boring games. But, as far as I am concerned, a lot of the fans here right on this board have stuck it out and been greatly rewarded. So, if you love basketball, and you love your team, you stick around for the outcome.

As far as challenges, I wonder if this will ever come into play. It might, look at the NFL, as long as teams do not challenge foolish things. It is a fine line. Time will tell. Silver is usually open to things that help the game improve.

I understand your point. My first memories of basketball is the 1976 title. Those memories are very sketchy. The 1975 World Series is clearer than that. I got into it as a kid for the most part the two lousy seasons before Bird arrived. I got into basketball at a great time. I appreciated it as a pure sport those bad years, then as a teenager I experienced the Bird dynasty. ESPN classic was great and then Youtube helps.

The Celtics have a great history, no doubt, and we are lucky to share the bond. We've all experienced many decades of following the team closely.

But what if we were Philly fans during year after year of tanking? Or the Clippers?

I watched all the Red Auerbach Roundball t.v. shows I could find on Youtube. It's a great game and that's why I critique the refs.

Red sold me my season ticket that I bought back during the Russell era. What a time to be a fan. But......then he left, it took a while for Cowens to take over and we had to live thru Hank Finkel. So, cherish all your memories, good bad or indifferent. This is a great organization to be a fan of. Up, Down, or whatever, they would never be Philly and tank.

RosalieTCeltics wrote:Red sold me my season ticket that I bought back during the Russell era. What a time to be a fan. But......then he left, it took a while for Cowens to take over and we had to live thru Hank Finkel. So, cherish all your memories, good bad or indifferent. This is a great organization to be a fan of.  Up, Down, or whatever, they would never be Philly and tank.

Philly had some halcyon times with Wilt, Hal Greer, Mo Cheeks, Dr. J, Billy Cunningham, Moses Malone, Chet Walker, Luke Jackson, Wally Jones, Darryl Dawkins, and Allen Iverson. They were the C's arch rivals back then. I remember when they eliminated the C's in the Eastern Finals, I think it was either 1966 or 1967 when the Philly fans were chanting, "Boston is Dead" near the end of the game. That harrowing chant is still reverberating in my memory.

There were some very rough times for the C's too - remember when they were owned by John Y. Brown and he traded three 1st round draft picks for Bob McAdoo because his wife, Phyllis George, told him that she was enamored with McAdoo's scoring ability? Red was pissed because he wasn't consulted about the trade and he almost left to go with the Knicks.

Lest we forget, the C's did tank when M.L. Carr strategically coached them to the bottom for the draft and to then make way for Rick Pitino. We all know how that worked out.

My sticking it out means if the Celtics dropped to .500 for the rest of the season and fizzled out, I'd still be watching.

Those final Doc years were miserable.

That is pretty wild if Rosalie is saying Red personally sold her a season ticket. I somewhat remember Johnny Most or someone joking about Larry Bird doing everything including selling popcorn in the stands. Maybe that rings a bell for others.

Sandpd, that's a good point about Carr and the Pitino era along with the Phyllis George stuff. I wonder how a guy like Antoine Walker might have panned out if he had been drafted into a good team with a nice learning structure.

I hate the star calls the most. Maybe the league is finally cutting back on those. Harden choked by fouling Smart twice. In another era, he probably gets away with those or at least one of them? Oh, I hate the part where the crowd is told, "Everybody clap your hands." Celtics fans don't need that. It's a distraction. It takes away from the game as a pure sport.

And yes on Philly. That was the first rivalry I experienced. Mo Cheeks was a tough competitor. I couldn't help but be in awe of Andrew Toney's jump shot. A lot of memories are flowing back. I remember Bird saying what he did about Moses Malone but won't repeat it.

it's true, for one whole season my friends and I went to every game, sat in all different sections to decide where we would want our season's tickets. We finally decided that we wanted first balcony, second row, right across from the Celtics bench in the old Garden. We went in in the summer to buy our tickets and our walked Red, his secretary was the only other one in their office. He came out, looked at us and joked a bit, then said "where the hell do you want to sit". We told him, he showed us our seats on a board they kept and that was it!!! Wild, he did it all. Those were the days when you would go to the ticket booth, get the same guy selling tickets every game, and he would reach down and say "I knew you guys would be here, here's some good seats"!! He loved us. Three women in the 60's with their own seasons tickets!!

Great memories

Rosalie, kudos to you, Super Celtic Fan! Thanks for another great Celtic story.

Yes, I have many great memories. I fondly recall going to the double-headers back in the early 60's. Usually, after they had showered, the two teams that had played in the 1st game would linger around the center court exits to the lobby so they could catch a glimpse of the C's in the 2nd game. It was an opportune time to get autographs, which I did, most notably, I got Wilt's, who was actually a gentleman and a real nice guy, despite Johnny Most's characterization of him.

Back then you could walk up to the ticket booth on the day of the games, even playoffs, to purchase your tickets. Later on during the 80's, I was a season ticket holder with seats in Section 8, the red cushioned ones behind the basket, with a view from the players' perspective. The tickets were only $8.00 . . . you can't even buy a beer for that price now.

Who could forget when Philly was about to eliminate the C's in the 1982 Eastern Conference finals? The Garden crowd spontaneously broke into chant, admonishing Philly to "Beat L.A." It was the genesis of that most popular sports chant. After that game Darryl Dawkins was asked if he had heard the Garden crowd's chant, he candidly replied, “Man, when I heard that, my dick got stiff.” I remember reading that in the newspapers the following day. Outrageous as he was, "Chocolate Thunder" was a one of a kind basketball luminary who always had fun. May he rest in peace in "Planet Lovetron."

http://grantland.com/the-triangle/darryl-dawkins-1957-2015/

The bottom line is that from the "get go" I have always bled Celtic Green and always will to the end.

Double Headers, The Harlem Globetrotters, The Harlem Magicians some crazy days back then. We were talking about the Christmas and New Years Eve games this year, we were in the playoffs and I was missing Easter dinner back then. Talk about being on my Mom's black list!! No Italian girl misses Easter dinner!!!!!! I did.

They were wild times back then, but alot of fun and great memories.