My recap:
1) I'm so glad I didn't ditch the birthday party for this. Burgers, cupcakes, beer, little girls smashing their hands into frosting...good times.
1a) That game was hurtful to watch.
2) Outrebounded 44-30. Looks even worse when you take out Ruffin's 5 in 5 minutes of garbage time. Outlaw, Frye and LMA combined for 7 rebounds in 76 minutes. Not the best effort there, it seems.
3) As miffed as I was that we weren't getting many calls early (I heard Roy's "uugh!" more than I care to without whistles) I was much more upset that it wasn't even the end of the first quarter before he was flailing his arms around after a shot while staring at the refs going back on D. That's not his call to argue--that's on Nate to get into the ear of someone (see J*ckson, Phil and Popovich, Greg).
4) Someone said it earlier in the thread, but there wasn't a lot of ball movement going around after the first quarter. There's a chart (trying to remember where) that charts offensive efficiency and eFG% based upon number of touches per second in the possession. We were on the low end all night, and it bit us.
5) Greg seemed to be the only dude strong enough to keep Yao out of the lane. More on that later.
6) I'm sure it's classy not to lay someone out when you're getting embarrassed at home, but at some point you can't let guys wag their finger at your team while we're getting called for something like 5 and-ones at the other end. Drop a forearm on someone, especially after Roy got hit.
7) We were 5-29 from 19 feet out. We were 1-11 from 3, so that means we were 4-18 on jumpers from 19-23 feet. Someone tell me the last "efficient" offense you saw that shot 21% of its game shots from 19-23 feet, and shot 22% while doing it.
8) I'm trying very hard not to be all on Oden's jock, but the man went for 15 and 5 on 6-7 shooting and only 3 fouls in 22 minutes. I get that we pulled him during garbage time, so this isn't a "bag on the coach for not playing him enough" thing. It's a "literally...HOU has no one that can contain him, and I didn't see Yao getting many good looks or shots when Oden was in the game" thing. HOU needs to be absolutely abused if Dikembe Mutombo comes in the game. Abused hard. Oden was doing it. He needs to do it more.
9) Kick a chair, punch a water bucket, throw a basketball to Mars...whatever Blake needs to do to get himself psyched up to play against Brooks, I hope he does it. That, or Bayless get into the game. Blake's not doing us much good if he's taking only 1 shot every 5 minutes he's in the game, and not shooting it well when he does.
10) I can think of very few winning scenarios that involve Channing Frye getting 20 playoff minutes in a game, or shooting about as much as Oden does. How about this?? Anytime you think of putting Frye in, Nate--do us all a favor and put Batum and Outlaw in at the same time instead of that. With LMA/Outlaw/Przy/Oden as our bigs, there should be no way Frye gets one minute, much less 20.
Perhaps I'll stop now. I reserve the right to write more later.
That said, we're nowhere close to out of it right now.
