I think Houston’s defense is actually good. Fred, Dillon, Jabari, Tari, Tate, Amen are all good defenders, Sengun is bigger and stronger, Green has the size and athleticism to be good and now you have the discipline of a good coach.
(As a note, in our two games, neither Amen nor Tari played.)
Whether their defense is technically "good" or not may remain to be seen, but they came out and played up to us. We played down to them. A classic problem that we've seen over and over. Houston played hard-nosed in-your-face D for 96 minutes. They played us like they had something to prove, and they damn well did prove it. Yeah, Dillon got away with crap like he always does, but they wanted it, we wilted, and we've got to take a lot of lessons from that.
One of the things we should learn is that we need to play harder. We need to make other teams uncomfortable on offense. Because it works. There's been some talk above of finding regular rotation minutes for Colby/Keon/Kessler even though those guys are technically like our 12th-14th guys when everybody is healthy (and Keon's a two-way, so he can't be here every game). But I say, why not open up the rotation a bit? Why not tell each of these guys (and given the way he's played as a lead guard this year, I'd throw Davion in that group as well for the moment) that they are each gonna get a four-minute stretch in the first half and a four-minute stretch in the second half and that for those four minutes, their job on defense is to harass the ball on the perimeter until they puke. That's it. Rest in a corner on offense just spreading the floor if you gotta, because we're going to have four guys who can score on the floor. Open and close each half with the starters, and have 16 minutes in the middle with a harasser on the floor at all times, something like this:
0-6: Fox/Huerter/Barnes/Keegan/Domas (starters do 6 minutes to open)
6-8: Monk/DAVION/Huerter/Keegan/Domas
8-10: Monk/DAVION/Keegan/Vezenkov/Domas
10-12: Fox/Monk/KESSLER/Vezenkov/Lyles
12-14: Monk/Duarte/KESSLER/Vezenkov/McLen
14-16: KEON/Monk/Duarte/Lyles/McLen
16-18: Fox/KEON/Duarte/Lyles/McLen
18-20: Fox/COLBY/Barnes/Lyles/Domas
20-22: Fox/COLBY/Barnes/Keegan/Domas
22-24: Fox/Monk/Huerter/Keegan/Domas
So, at the beginning of the half while most guys are fresh, we go longer stints, then quicker subs throughout the 2nd/4th quarters. That comes out to something like:
Fox/Domas 32
Keegan 28
Monk 24
Huerter/Barnes 20
Lyles 16
McLen/Vezenkov/Duarte 12
Davion/Kessler/Keon/Colby 8
Yeah, I know, that's a FOURTEEN MAN rotation, but dudes will be fresh. Everybody gets to play that much harder. I want to try something like that and see what it looks like.