I had been getting tired of how the Rockets were being so widely praised for their “bold” and “revolutionary” (more like “cold” and “devolutionary”) strategy of not even pretending to have any true bigmen on the court. I understand that it’s fun to see something new in the NBA, but it’s easy to have gimmicky stuff work when you’ve got two legit superstars and you’re playing teams that aren’t very good. The question is, does it work against teams who are actually trying?
The answer seems to be: no. The Rockets got blown out by the Clippers, in large part because they had no one to stop Ivica Zubac or Montrezl Harrell. Zubac didn’t even need to play after midway through the third quarter, because his team was up by 26. If he had stayed in, he would’ve just kept scoring. Thanks, Rockets, for robbing us of a for-sure 20-burger from Zubac because of your interminable will to suck.
It’s not like Clippers were even deliberately trying to punish the Rockets by forcing the ball into Zubac. It was just naturally happening. Zubac was just kicking their butt like it was no big deal, scoring his usual opportunistic buckets while Lames (notice his “J’ replaced by an “L”) Hardon bricked and Chucksell Statpadbrook chucked.