The turnovers youre talking about are frustrating, no doubt. But they are literally the same ol, garden variety turnover we’ve seen from every preseason jazz team coached by Snyder. His teams always start slow. And I think that’s because, on offense, they are always hyper-focused on “connectivity” and “chemistry” over crisply taking the first good open shot. You see a maddening number of turnovers produced by extra passes as they hunt for a better shot. Some of this behavior is actually good—it’s indicative of the team coming together—but they need to move through this phase really quickly to have any chance of competing against whoever their playoff opponent is. And, in general, Q needs to move his teams through this better and faster every season.
There’s all kind of proof of the fact that Harden gets an unprecedented whistle. Like, totally unprecedented. I’ll refrain from saying whether or not I think it’s a just whistle, and just emphasize how unprecedented it is. And this whistle has absolutely everything to do with playing the Rockets. The dynamic between Harden-defender-referees is the most dominate feature of the game. That’s why it’s so ****ing boring to watch them.
I’m not blaming him either, fwiw. But I don’t honor his craft, either.
