Read the following. It might seem long, but every word is valuable.
How did we dismantle the Rockets? What blueprint did we draw up?
We played paint ball.
We did what every team should do (but doesn't do) against them - we exploited and toyed with their small ball game. We played everything inside the paint. (We only took 30 threes, they took 60!) We attacked that rim. Took shots from the paint. Hell, if we missed those shots we knew because their biggest guy was PJ Tucker at just 6'5'' we could out rebound them and put up another shot. If we missed, we didn't care -- we knew the very next shot was ours. We got an astonishing 20 offensive rebounds to their 8. Total rebounds was 76-42! Tucker their big man is only one inch taller than our point guard Frank The Frenchman. You throw in our monster Mitchell Robinson who never moves away from under the rim and they really didn't have a chance against us.
We played paint ball. Inside game. We sure as hell weren't going to beat them trying to match threes, so we kept our game close to the rim and gobbled up the rebounds from their small lineup. We really did use their lineup against them. Our coach Mike Miller is a basketball journey man (small unheard of colleges and D League coaching) and that is why he is so good. He is grass roots basketball. He knows our team does not have the elite players, but he knows that if you play sound smart fundamental basketball (rebounds wins games) you can beat a super team like the Rockets.
It was a great win. Really astonishing to watch. D'Antoni was going nuts. He saw what we were doing and knew he couldn't stop it. He got outcoached by a guy who was coaching Division II UC Riverside five years ago. We love our coach Miller - fans and players do. Unfortunately our dopey owner and front office want a sexy celebrity coach (Van Gundy, Mark Jackson, John Calipari, Jay Wright, Jason Kidd...) and Miller is gone. Sad and a shame. Our guy Miller more than anybody else deserves to be a coach in the NBA. Makes you hate professional sports to see a deserving guy like Coach Miller get let go just so the team could bring in a headline-grabbing guy.