I'll be shocked if Houston plays Asik and Howard together for more than a few brief minutes. Their offense spacing is terrible with those two on the court. This is a team that greatly utilizes analytics and the team was ineffective with that pair on the court. They haven't given those lineups court time since December. If they were going to play the pair together when it matters most in the playoffs don't you think they would've experimented with it at least briefly the last 4 months of the regular season?
If McHale goes down losing the series he won't want to be known for making panic moves like that.
They tried it in the first quarter of game 1. Asik came in for Jones, but picked up two quick fouls. In the second quarter, Asik came in for Howard, but he didn't play at all in the second half and didn't re-enter the game until Howard fouled out with 10.8 seconds left in overtime. The problem is, if you put Howard on Aldridge, who guards Lopez? Granted Lopez isn't the all around offensive threat Aldridge is, but he's pretty good on the low blocks, pretty good running the pick and roll with Batum and holds the franchise record for offensive rebounds in a season. If they put Terrence Jones on him and Aldridge draws Howard out of the paint, look for Lopez to have a great game, with highly efficient scoring and lots of put back off of offensive rebounds. He will be the one "shooting over a chair" this time.
I agree with you 100% about Howard/Asik totally screwing up the Rockets spacing on offense (I made the same comment in my previous post). Aldridge is such a mismatch for them. He just absolutely abused Terrence Jones (like he also did in the regular season). So, that forces their hand. They either put their best defender and rim protector on Aldridge, which hurts the rest of their defense (Jones on Lopez, Lillard, Matthews and Batum driving/cutting down the lane when Aldridge draws Howard out of the paint), or they play Asik in place of Jones to improve their defense, but kill their own offensive flow.
I like the fact that we are the ones dictating the match-ups for once. We never saw that when Nate was the coach. Well, that kind of goes without saying. We never saw ANY kind of adjustment when Nate was coaching. They are the ones that need to adjust to try to find an answer to stopping Aldridge, and doing so hurts them elsewhere. That's the nice thing about having other guys who can score in multiple ways, and having a true center playing next to Aldridge. Lopez has a huge size advantage over Jones, unlike Hickson, who was an undersized PF playing out of position. So, McHale has to pick his poison. Try to slow down Aldridge by putting Howard on him and make it easier for everyone else to score. Or, go big with Asik and screw up his own offense.
BTW, one reason Asik and Howard didn't play a lot together during the last four months of the season was Asik's "injury" that caused him to 34 games while he was being shopped, err... rehabbing. And then, when Asik did come back, Howard missed 11 games late in the season. Hard to play them together when one, or the other, was out for almost the entire second half of the season.
BNM
