Minnesota Sports Forum

Half filled arena and dead crowd in the first half last night. My honey and I actually thought about leaving at halftime after watching so many uncontested dunks and threes while Teague dribbled around on the other end. Ultimately we decided to stay just to watch Coolio's halftime show (it was terrible), and were rewarded with a stunning turnaround. I thought about giving Thibs credit for making defensive adjustments at halftime until I read KAT's postgame quote that the team talked about changing their defense BEFORE Thibs even got into the locker room! Almost every three in the second half was contested...wow, what a turnaround!

The only sour note of the second half was courtesy of Thibs. The team is red hot and up 6 after another defensive stop with 20 seconds to play. A good coach sets up a play to get his team up 8 at the buzzer, but Dumb Thibs again decides clearing out for an Andrew iso is the right move...smh. Predictably, Andrew gets his pocket picked, and Houston gets a layup to cut the deficit to 4. I thought that was going to come back to haunt us, but this talented team decided to win the 4th quarter DESPITE Thibs.

Covington was brilliant. They credited him with 2 steals, but I counted 5. And yet he was a minus 3, showing the occasional absurdity of that stat. Jones had three steals and the team was almost unscored upon during the paltry 12 minutes Thibs allotted him.

Nice game that we desperately needed to win. Good to have Wig back, at least for one game. Thibs proved last night once and for all that he is not an NBA coach. We're stuck with him apparently, but man I'm sick of him.

longstrangetrip wrote:Half filled arena and dead crowd in the first half last night. My honey and I actually thought about leaving at halftime after watching so many uncontested dunks and threes while Teague dribbled around on the other end. Ultimately we decided to stay just to watch Coolio's halftime show (it was terrible), and were rewarded with a stunning turnaround. I thought about giving Thibs credit for making defensive adjustments at halftime until I read KAT's postgame quote that the team talked about changing their defense BEFORE Thibs even got into the locker room! Almost every three in the second half was contested...wow, what a turnaround!

The only sour note of the second half was courtesy of Thibs. The team is red hot and up 6 after another defensive stop with 20 seconds to play. A good coach sets up a play to get his team up 8 at the buzzer, but Dumb Thibs again decides clearing out for an Andrew iso is the right move...smh. Predictably, Andrew gets his pocket picked, and Houston gets a layup to cut the deficit to 4. I thought that was going to come back to haunt us, but this talented team decided to win the 4th quarter DESPITE Thibs.

Covington was brilliant. They credited him with 2 steals, but I counted 5. And yet he was a minus 3, showing the occasional absurdity of that stat. Jones had three steals and the team was almost unscored upon during the paltry 12 minutes Thibs allotted him.

Nice game that we desperately needed to win. Good to have Wig back, at least for one game. Thibs proved last night once and for all that he is not an NBA coach. We're stuck with him apparently, but man I'm sick of him.

Burn him alive!!! Or something.

My favorite is that only the players get credit for the defensive adjustments... but only the coach gets blame for Wiggins being stripped. Not even 50/50 on any of it. Nope. Pitchforks... NOW!!!

longstrangetrip wrote:Half filled arena and dead crowd in the first half last night. My honey and I actually thought about leaving at halftime after watching so many uncontested dunks and threes while Teague dribbled around on the other end. Ultimately we decided to stay just to watch Coolio's halftime show (it was terrible), and were rewarded with a stunning turnaround. I thought about giving Thibs credit for making defensive adjustments at halftime until I read KAT's postgame quote that the team talked about changing their defense BEFORE Thibs even got into the locker room! Almost every three in the second half was contested...wow, what a turnaround!

The only sour note of the second half was courtesy of Thibs. The team is red hot and up 6 after another defensive stop with 20 seconds to play. A good coach sets up a play to get his team up 8 at the buzzer, but Dumb Thibs again decides clearing out for an Andrew iso is the right move...smh. Predictably, Andrew gets his pocket picked, and Houston gets a layup to cut the deficit to 4. I thought that was going to come back to haunt us, but this talented team decided to win the 4th quarter DESPITE Thibs.

Covington was brilliant. They credited him with 2 steals, but I counted 5. And yet he was a minus 3, showing the occasional absurdity of that stat. Jones had three steals and the team was almost unscored upon during the paltry 12 minutes Thibs allotted him.

Nice game that we desperately needed to win. Good to have Wig back, at least for one game. Thibs proved last night once and for all that he is not an NBA coach. We're stuck with him apparently, but man I'm sick of him.

Covs -3.

The second unit was great defensively, they just couldn't score. And the offense dropped even further with dieng playing due to kats foul trouble.

Dieng was a -22 rtg.

Tyus led the team with a def rtg of 68. Crazy.

Geez, I guess I should give up on this team more often. I turn the damn thing off in disgust during the 2nd quarter only to find out we came back and won. I literally checked a couple of other websites to see if the score was reversed in error on ESPN!

I watched the replay of the 2nd half and agree with others: That was the best defense I've ever seen Wiggins play. He actually made some huge TEAM defensive plays in addition to some great individual effort. And for the third time this season, he made 50% or more of his shots! Is this Andrew Wiggins or a magic unicorn!?

I was also glad to see Harden fail miserably (in the second half) on his foul-baiting shenanigans. Like J-Pete said, it's no fun to watch a guy so talented spend half of his possessions trying to manufacture fouls through all sorts of unnatural moves.

Great win against the #6 offense in the league.

Q12543 wrote:Geez, I guess I should give up on this team more often. I turn the damn thing off in disgust during the 2nd quarter only to find out we came back and won. I literally checked a couple of other websites to see if the score was reversed in error on ESPN!

I watched the replay of the 2nd half and agree with others: That was the best defense I've ever seen Wiggins play. He actually made some huge TEAM defensive plays in addition to some great individual effort. And for the third time this season, he made 50% or more of his shots! Is this Andrew Wiggins or a magic unicorn!?

I was also glad to see Harden fail miserably (in the second half) on his foul-baiting shenanigans. Like J-Pete said, it's no fun to watch a guy so talented spend half of his possessions trying to manufacture fouls through all sorts of unnatural moves.

Great win against the #6 offense in the league.

Piece on Wiggins' and a possible (hopeful) transition into Robert Covington... or some version of him.

https://www.theringer.com/nba/2018/12/4/18124724/andrew-wiggins-is-bad

AbeVigodaLive wrote:

Q12543 wrote:Geez, I guess I should give up on this team more often. I turn the damn thing off in disgust during the 2nd quarter only to find out we came back and won. I literally checked a couple of other websites to see if the score was reversed in error on ESPN!

I watched the replay of the 2nd half and agree with others: That was the best defense I've ever seen Wiggins play. He actually made some huge TEAM defensive plays in addition to some great individual effort. And for the third time this season, he made 50% or more of his shots! Is this Andrew Wiggins or a magic unicorn!?

I was also glad to see Harden fail miserably (in the second half) on his foul-baiting shenanigans. Like J-Pete said, it's no fun to watch a guy so talented spend half of his possessions trying to manufacture fouls through all sorts of unnatural moves.

Great win against the #6 offense in the league.

Piece on Wiggins' and a possible (hopeful) transition into Robert Covington... or some version of him.

https://www.theringer.com/nba/2018/12/4/18124724/andrew-wiggins-is-bad

Excellent piece, thanks for sharing.

AbeVigodaLive wrote:

longstrangetrip wrote:Half filled arena and dead crowd in the first half last night. My honey and I actually thought about leaving at halftime after watching so many uncontested dunks and threes while Teague dribbled around on the other end. Ultimately we decided to stay just to watch Coolio's halftime show (it was terrible), and were rewarded with a stunning turnaround. I thought about giving Thibs credit for making defensive adjustments at halftime until I read KAT's postgame quote that the team talked about changing their defense BEFORE Thibs even got into the locker room! Almost every three in the second half was contested...wow, what a turnaround!

The only sour note of the second half was courtesy of Thibs. The team is red hot and up 6 after another defensive stop with 20 seconds to play. A good coach sets up a play to get his team up 8 at the buzzer, but Dumb Thibs again decides clearing out for an Andrew iso is the right move...smh. Predictably, Andrew gets his pocket picked, and Houston gets a layup to cut the deficit to 4. I thought that was going to come back to haunt us, but this talented team decided to win the 4th quarter DESPITE Thibs.

Covington was brilliant. They credited him with 2 steals, but I counted 5. And yet he was a minus 3, showing the occasional absurdity of that stat. Jones had three steals and the team was almost unscored upon during the paltry 12 minutes Thibs allotted him.

Nice game that we desperately needed to win. Good to have Wig back, at least for one game. Thibs proved last night once and for all that he is not an NBA coach. We're stuck with him apparently, but man I'm sick of him.

Burn him alive!!! Or something.

My favorite is that only the players get credit for the defensive adjustments... but only the coach gets blame for Wiggins being stripped. Not even 50/50 on any of it. Nope. Pitchforks... NOW!!!

Nope, the blame for that end of quarter play in my opinion is 75% Wig and 25% Thibs. But Wig is who he is (and had a terrific game otherwise), so I tend to blame the guy who put him in a position that where he was destined to fail. Really Abe, do you want us to believe you were nodding in agreement with Thibs when you saw Wig isolated for the end of quarter shot? Did you really think
it was going to work...just this one time?

And as for giving credit to the players for the defensive adjustment to the players, that's not me, that's KAT...he's the one who said the players made a commitment to change their defense before Thibs even got to the locker room!

longstrangetrip wrote:

AbeVigodaLive wrote:

longstrangetrip wrote:Half filled arena and dead crowd in the first half last night. My honey and I actually thought about leaving at halftime after watching so many uncontested dunks and threes while Teague dribbled around on the other end. Ultimately we decided to stay just to watch Coolio's halftime show (it was terrible), and were rewarded with a stunning turnaround. I thought about giving Thibs credit for making defensive adjustments at halftime until I read KAT's postgame quote that the team talked about changing their defense BEFORE Thibs even got into the locker room! Almost every three in the second half was contested...wow, what a turnaround!

The only sour note of the second half was courtesy of Thibs. The team is red hot and up 6 after another defensive stop with 20 seconds to play. A good coach sets up a play to get his team up 8 at the buzzer, but Dumb Thibs again decides clearing out for an Andrew iso is the right move...smh. Predictably, Andrew gets his pocket picked, and Houston gets a layup to cut the deficit to 4. I thought that was going to come back to haunt us, but this talented team decided to win the 4th quarter DESPITE Thibs.

Covington was brilliant. They credited him with 2 steals, but I counted 5. And yet he was a minus 3, showing the occasional absurdity of that stat. Jones had three steals and the team was almost unscored upon during the paltry 12 minutes Thibs allotted him.

Nice game that we desperately needed to win. Good to have Wig back, at least for one game. Thibs proved last night once and for all that he is not an NBA coach. We're stuck with him apparently, but man I'm sick of him.

Burn him alive!!! Or something.

My favorite is that only the players get credit for the defensive adjustments... but only the coach gets blame for Wiggins being stripped. Not even 50/50 on any of it. Nope. Pitchforks... NOW!!!

Nope, the blame for that end of quarter play in my opinion is 75% Wig and 25% Thibs. But Wig is who he is (and had a terrific game otherwise), so I tend to blame the guy who put him in a position that where he was destined to fail. Really Abe, do you want us to believe you were nodding in agreement with Thibs when you saw Wig isolated for the end of quarter shot? Did you really think
it was going to work...just this one time?

And as for giving credit to the players for the defensive adjustment to the players, that's not me, that's KAT...he's the one who said the players made a commitment to change their defense before Thibs even got to the locker room!

Fair enough. Then those players are the ones who get all the blame should they revert back to crappy defensive play. Thibs is excused whether it's good or bad... because the players get to decide (per postgame collective self-analysis) how they play.

Hey, I'm not championing for Thibodeau here. But the guy can't be totally and universally terrible every single time... when the team is bad. And... when the team is good.

Obviously, we all think he has flaws. But he might not be... MIGHT NOT BE... the worst coach of all time. I guess the outcome of that is still undecided though. The season is still young.

AbeVigodaLive wrote:

longstrangetrip wrote:

AbeVigodaLive wrote:

longstrangetrip wrote:Half filled arena and dead crowd in the first half last night. My honey and I actually thought about leaving at halftime after watching so many uncontested dunks and threes while Teague dribbled around on the other end. Ultimately we decided to stay just to watch Coolio's halftime show (it was terrible), and were rewarded with a stunning turnaround. I thought about giving Thibs credit for making defensive adjustments at halftime until I read KAT's postgame quote that the team talked about changing their defense BEFORE Thibs even got into the locker room! Almost every three in the second half was contested...wow, what a turnaround!

The only sour note of the second half was courtesy of Thibs. The team is red hot and up 6 after another defensive stop with 20 seconds to play. A good coach sets up a play to get his team up 8 at the buzzer, but Dumb Thibs again decides clearing out for an Andrew iso is the right move...smh. Predictably, Andrew gets his pocket picked, and Houston gets a layup to cut the deficit to 4. I thought that was going to come back to haunt us, but this talented team decided to win the 4th quarter DESPITE Thibs.

Covington was brilliant. They credited him with 2 steals, but I counted 5. And yet he was a minus 3, showing the occasional absurdity of that stat. Jones had three steals and the team was almost unscored upon during the paltry 12 minutes Thibs allotted him.

Nice game that we desperately needed to win. Good to have Wig back, at least for one game. Thibs proved last night once and for all that he is not an NBA coach. We're stuck with him apparently, but man I'm sick of him.

Burn him alive!!! Or something.

My favorite is that only the players get credit for the defensive adjustments... but only the coach gets blame for Wiggins being stripped. Not even 50/50 on any of it. Nope. Pitchforks... NOW!!!

Nope, the blame for that end of quarter play in my opinion is 75% Wig and 25% Thibs. But Wig is who he is (and had a terrific game otherwise), so I tend to blame the guy who put him in a position that where he was destined to fail. Really Abe, do you want us to believe you were nodding in agreement with Thibs when you saw Wig isolated for the end of quarter shot? Did you really think
it was going to work...just this one time?

And as for giving credit to the players for the defensive adjustment to the players, that's not me, that's KAT...he's the one who said the players made a commitment to change their defense before Thibs even got to the locker room!

Fair enough. Then those players are the ones who get all the blame should they revert back to crappy defensive play. Thibs is excused whether it's good or bad... because the players get to decide (per postgame collective self-analysis) how they play.

Hey, I'm not championing for Thibodeau here. But the guy can't be totally and universally terrible every single time... when the team is bad. And... when the team is good.

Obviously, we all think he has flaws. But he might not be... MIGHT NOT BE... the worst coach of all time. I guess the outcome of that is still undecided though. The season is still young.

I'll take it a step further. Thibs is a good coach. No one likes any coach who is losing. I'm 100% positive that there is a Houston Rockets message board somewhere with a Fire D'antoni thread. There are legit criticisms for Thibs like any coach, but he has a gameplan that more often than not gives us a chance to win. That's been pretty positive from what I can tell. I like that we control the ball and have a disciplined philosophy. I'd like to see us move it around more consistently, but we don't turn it over and we make disciplined high percentage plays on offense even though it can be a labor watching us get in our sets.

All that being said it wouldn't kill me to move on from Thibs. What scares me more is to think of Glen making anymore decisions about this team moving forward.

thedoper wrote:

AbeVigodaLive wrote:

longstrangetrip wrote:

AbeVigodaLive wrote:

longstrangetrip wrote:Half filled arena and dead crowd in the first half last night. My honey and I actually thought about leaving at halftime after watching so many uncontested dunks and threes while Teague dribbled around on the other end. Ultimately we decided to stay just to watch Coolio's halftime show (it was terrible), and were rewarded with a stunning turnaround. I thought about giving Thibs credit for making defensive adjustments at halftime until I read KAT's postgame quote that the team talked about changing their defense BEFORE Thibs even got into the locker room! Almost every three in the second half was contested...wow, what a turnaround!

The only sour note of the second half was courtesy of Thibs. The team is red hot and up 6 after another defensive stop with 20 seconds to play. A good coach sets up a play to get his team up 8 at the buzzer, but Dumb Thibs again decides clearing out for an Andrew iso is the right move...smh. Predictably, Andrew gets his pocket picked, and Houston gets a layup to cut the deficit to 4. I thought that was going to come back to haunt us, but this talented team decided to win the 4th quarter DESPITE Thibs.

Covington was brilliant. They credited him with 2 steals, but I counted 5. And yet he was a minus 3, showing the occasional absurdity of that stat. Jones had three steals and the team was almost unscored upon during the paltry 12 minutes Thibs allotted him.

Nice game that we desperately needed to win. Good to have Wig back, at least for one game. Thibs proved last night once and for all that he is not an NBA coach. We're stuck with him apparently, but man I'm sick of him.

Burn him alive!!! Or something.

My favorite is that only the players get credit for the defensive adjustments... but only the coach gets blame for Wiggins being stripped. Not even 50/50 on any of it. Nope. Pitchforks... NOW!!!

Nope, the blame for that end of quarter play in my opinion is 75% Wig and 25% Thibs. But Wig is who he is (and had a terrific game otherwise), so I tend to blame the guy who put him in a position that where he was destined to fail. Really Abe, do you want us to believe you were nodding in agreement with Thibs when you saw Wig isolated for the end of quarter shot? Did you really think
it was going to work...just this one time?

And as for giving credit to the players for the defensive adjustment to the players, that's not me, that's KAT...he's the one who said the players made a commitment to change their defense before Thibs even got to the locker room!

Fair enough. Then those players are the ones who get all the blame should they revert back to crappy defensive play. Thibs is excused whether it's good or bad... because the players get to decide (per postgame collective self-analysis) how they play.

Hey, I'm not championing for Thibodeau here. But the guy can't be totally and universally terrible every single time... when the team is bad. And... when the team is good.

Obviously, we all think he has flaws. But he might not be... MIGHT NOT BE... the worst coach of all time. I guess the outcome of that is still undecided though. The season is still young.

I'll take it a step further. Thibs is a good coach. No one likes any coach who is losing. I'm 100% positive that there is a Houston Rockets message board somewhere with a Fire D'antoni thread. There are legit criticisms for Thibs like any coach, but he has a gameplan that more often than not gives us a chance to win. That's been pretty positive from what I can tell. I like that we control the ball and have a disciplined philosophy. I'd like to see us move it around more consistently, but we don't turn it over and we make disciplined high percentage plays on offense even though it can be a labor watching us get in our sets.

All that being said it wouldn't kill me to move on from Thibs. What scares me more is to think of Glen making anymore decisions about this team moving forward.

Typically I'm not exactly excited to see the Wiggins ISO at the end of a quarter BUT in this game Wiggin had actually shown something going to the basket I thought there was good chance this was going to work out. Did any of his teammates tell him a double was coming? It was pretty quick. I'd join people in being unhappy with Wiggs iso in alpt of instances like this but not this game.

Also on the Collio half time show one of the Houston TV crew (playby play guy I think) was debating whether to get ice cream or go to the Coolio halftime show. He went to the halftime show and was disappointed. Someone was nice enough to bring him ice cream and they were joking he was just going to eat it on air. Why did the Coolio show suck?