The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - The Mike D'Antoni Show 1-29-20

Episode Date: January 29, 2020

Rockets Head Coach Mike D'Antoni joins Matt each week to talk Houston Rockets Basketball

A straightaway three, it is up. And it's good. The Rockets are rolling now. Do a better, harder, longer. Rejected. The beard is cooking. And they play together. They play hard.

He set. He fired. And he had the three. Now, exclusive insight and the latest on your Houston Rockets. You've got to be a champion. To be the champion. Presented by Billiard Factory. Rockets head coach Mike Dan Tony joins the Matt Thomas show on Sports Talk 790,

home of the run. And this four-game road trip comes to a close tonight here in Portland with the rockets checking on the Portland Trailblazers. The game will start at 9 o'clock right here on Sports Talk 790. And the man that will coach your rockets, hopefully to victory tonight, joins us here for a segment here on the Matt Thomas show. Coach, first of all, thanks for the time as always. And congratulations. One of the most exciting wins, and I would be strange to say that with no James and no Russ and no Clint. but one of the more exciting victories, I think, in recent Rockets history,

your squad, a shorthanded, played some exceptional basketball in Salt Lake a couple nights ago. You know, they're all, you know, it's funny, but they're all professional basketball players. They're all good. And we were motivated in a sense. Maybe we called them a little flat, seeing that everybody was out. Who knows? But we did our job, and guys played great. We had exceptional performances in all, Eric.

And I thought Daniel House played well. and just everybody contributed. And it was a fun night, that's for sure. It was, you know, the three ball, first of all, Eric, and, you know, Eric has it in him. It's just with only one basketball and other two other great scores, and the team it's hard to do so. Did you kind of poke at him, or was it kind of like, you know what?

If we're going to win this game, Eric, you're going to have to have a special kind of night. Well, I think he knew it. I don't have to tell him that. And also, he had the opportunity. to do it. And like you said, you know, you have to pick your spots otherwise, which is okay, which means we just have more firepower. And also, you have to know that Eric's now just getting his rhythm back. And by playing a lot of men's and being the focal point, he was able to, because he started a game off a little slow. And, you know, if you had everybody else,

maybe as slow turns in, he never got it going. So hopefully this will help him going forward. But I do know he's feeling better. He's feeling better physically. He's getting into a rhythm. I'm sure there's got a great shot of confidence from the game. So hopefully this will continue. Did you have to mull over the starting lineup? Or because there were so many players gone, it was almost like, all right, I know who I have. I'm just going to plug him in because, you know, let's be honest, you had Daniel House going against Rudy Gobert a lot in the low block and him and PJ. I mean, they're going to lose six, seven inches to those guys, him every time.

And they held their own against the big fellow. Yeah, I mean, the whole strategy of it was we're not going to match up with him traditionally and probably beat them. And, you know, Gobert's strength is staying right at the rim and blocking shots and keeping us from shooting layouts. So then offensively, he's really good at picking and a roll and, you know, it creates a two-on-one situation. And so to take that away, we went small and we'll, you know, we'll give up. some offense row we thought we would give up some offensive rebounds some of that but uh able to keep him away from the rim and uh make it up on the offensive band and how it turned out is we gave up hardly anything to them uh matter of fact and uh and then we were able to get to the rim and get shots at

will they couldn't stay in front of our guys so it worked out and that might be a short-term solution might not work always like any kind of different thing it doesn't you know necessarily work always but for that night it was good. So we'll see going forward. Did you guys unearth something? And maybe the answer to that is no, but I was so impressed. And I told you this this morning when I saw you downstairs about how you brought Rudy outside of the paint. And, you know, again, when you bring a 7-foot-1 player outside of his comfort zone,

he's not not be nearly as effective defensively. And I thought you guys were able to really attack once you made the concerted effort to get him outside of 15 feet. Is that something that now teams can look at, or is that depending on who you have personnel-wise, That may or may not be the best thing for opposing teams to do. Well, personnel will dictate it, and now a lot of teams, that's why Milwaukee's have success. They've got a five to shoot threes, and they got one in Janus that can drive the hoop and find people.

So they play differently than everybody else, and so they're having a lot of success. Now, having said that, you know, we tried it two years ago with them, we put him in there, and we beat Utah pretty good, And actually we beat Portland the same thing by putting smalls in there, getting their bigs away, and then dropping them and getting to the basket. So, you know, it all depends. Can we hold our own defensively and keep people off the boards and really box out? Then you'll have the advantage.

If you can't, then, you know, it depends on who imposes their will. And, you know, last night we imposed our will or two nights ago. you got a little bit of everything from a lot of different folks Cephalosia gave you some decent minutes and then you put Michael Frazier out there who literally we don't know much about because of his you know, you know, G-League experience and he kind of held his own and sometimes you know what I that may not work as you know obviously there's still a league built on superstars

but when guys are down a little bit you never know who you can go to and I thought those two young men were able to help you in different sports in the game against the jazz no doubt I was really happy for Tombo he's a solid. Then when he gives us that little spurt offensively, also really helps. And, you know, going forward, probably see Topo as much as physically he can, you know, at 35, he can only play so many minutes. And so we'll do that. And then Michael Frazier, and yeah, you're right, I don't know anything about it because I wanted to see him in Summer League. He was hurt. I want to see him in training camp. He was hurt down to the G League. It's a completely different type of game. It doesn't really, I mean, you can see some stuff.

You don't see everything you need to see. And I was waiting for an opportunity to see it and got it against you're tall and I liked it. So, you know, with Top O' Plan and everybody else, if everybody's healthy, his minutes will be very spotty. But I won't hesitate in times if we're missing somebody, he could feel right in. Let's get to the injury front. And, again, obviously we're still looking at about six and a half hour. Maybe more than that eight hours till game time.

What do we know about James? I know he was doing some shooting before the game against the Jazz, and then tell us about Clinton. It feels like to me when you and I talk about Clint, it's just how he wakes up and how he's moving that particular day. Well, I think that, to be honest, I think that they're all going to play. And that might change. I don't know for sure.

It might be a, you know, they try to warm up and it hurts more than what I'm anticipating. But I think right now I think we've got a really good shot all of them playing. So that's good. And in Clint's case, you know, when you are a center and you're a, supposed to be a rim protector. I can't imagine anything hurting is more in trying to jump up and down to go finish a shot or block a shot than having to come down on those heels. So I guess just as you and I have talked about on multiple occasions,

it feels like maybe the best thing he'll be able to do is not step on a court during the All-Star break. And that may be the best way for him to heal those things. Yeah, it probably the only way to do it. It's, you know, and the thing with his injury, too, is that it does hurt. But as he gets warm during a game, it usually goes away. because there's an information there that the pain goes away most of the time. So it's mostly off days, and it's nagging, and to get warming up is hard. But once you get going, he should be okay.

Russ has put up some major offensive numbers for you, and especially in the absence of James a little bit. And I've asked you this before games, but for this audience, what are we seeing from the validity standpoint of Russ, at least on the offensive side in the last 20 games, and maybe we didn't see in the first 20 he played for the Rockets? Well, I think you can see he's played a lot more confidence, and he's shooting the basketball a lot better.

He's finishing at the rim a lot better. And I think also as a team, we've learned where we need to get him to get the best out of him. So he's been playing great. He's been playing at a good level. We just all, again, you know, sometimes we get confused exactly, you know, why we do this, why we do that, Sometimes it is a making this league, and sometimes you've got to make shots and all that,

but also we can't be 30th in transition defense and 30th in second chance points and think we're a legitimate team. And against Utah, we did not give that up. And we just got right up there. So if we can shore those two things up, we're going to be really good. And we need to do that. And sometimes it will be masked by just making shots, but the underlying problem is there. And we just got it. we're going to fix it. All right. So transition defense, I think, would be obviously a huge part of

improvement that could be for the second half of the year. Coach Dame Lillard is scoring. He's putting up James numbers. He's got 158 points in his last three games. I know your coaches have spent some time looking at him, but you've seen him a lot firsthand. What's going on with him lately? He feels like he's making every shot that he throws up the last couple weeks or so. Well, he's definitely on a roll. There's no doubt about that. But also the I think they've changed up a little bit the way to play. And McCull has been out, so it's probably getting a lot more touches, being featured more. But they're spreading the floor and doing a lot of picking rolls and doing a lot of stuff that putting the ball in his hand.

Like we're putting James' hands when he does that. The guy's incredibly gifted. And, you know, we'll have our hands full. But, you know, we'll see what we can do. And we'll try to take the challenge. And hopefully, you know, we're at the best of him. All right. looking forward to tonight coach thank you for the time we'll visit again next week

bye matt thank you thanks coach