SALMAN ALI
The Rockets have to work towards competence before contention
Oct 30, 2018, 7:07 am
Chris Paul's absence has hurt the Rockets. Photo by Hannah Foslien/Getty Images
After a surprising 1-4 start, the Houston Rockets have simply looked like a bad basketball team. Gone is the 65-win-juggernaut that took the Golden State Warriors to seven games in the Western Conference Finals. They’ve since been replaced by a team doesn’t seem to have much cohesion on both ends of the floor.
“I just kind of feel like we’re disjointed. I feel like we’re not connected,” Rockets guard Gerald Green said at Rockets’ practice Sunday.
The core of the problem has clearly been their defense. According to NBA.com/stats, the Rockets currently sit with the the league’s fourth worst Defensive RTG. After tearing through the league last season with their switch-everything scheme, the Rockets look fairly directionless with their system this year. It’s possible they’re just less equipped to handle such a scheme as many theorized after losing Trevor Ariza and Luc Mbah a Moute this summer, but the collective buy-in just isn’t there like it was last year.
“I think our communication is not good. We’re not communicating on the defensive end like we should,” said Green when asked what needs to change.
Head coach Mike D’Antoni toyed with the idea of abandoning switching altogether after Houston’s latest loss to the Clippers Friday night before backtracking a few days later. Last season, the Rockets switched with a purpose, the communication was excellent, and they played physical at the rim.
Here is a great video that demonstrates how great the Rockets defense was last year against the Jazz. As you can see, the Rockets ability to switch 1-5 gave teams nightmares as it nearly took away the ability to penetrate completely and forced offenses to take difficult isolation-based shots. The Warriors changed their entire offense from motion-based to isolation solely because Houston’s defense took them out of their system. This year, that discipline hasn’t been there.
“Our defense is just awful. We don’t have any continuity”, said coach D’Antoni Friday night.
To be fair to Houston, they’ve missed time from a lot key contributors. Chris Paul missed two games from suspension, James Harden has to yet to return from a Grade 1-Plus left hamstring strain, James Ennis is recovering from a Grade-2 hamstring strain himself, and Nenê Hilario recently re-aggravated his right calf strain and will be reevaluated in two weeks.
The Rockets are having the rely on rookies like Isaiah Hartenstein and Gary Clark to fill bench roles that were previously occupied by veterans before injuries. That’s a tall order for young players that weren’t expecting to play much this season.
In addition to their defense taking a step back, Houston’s once dependable offense has not been anything to write home about, sitting at 19th in the league as things stand. While it’s certainly worth noting that Harden and Paul have missed time, the Rockets are missing an exorbitant amount of wide open layups and 3-pointers. Per NBA.com/stats, the Rockets are shooting 35.6% (third worst) on wide-open field goals and 32.6% on wide-open threes (fourth worst).
Houston’s spacing takes a huge hit when Michael-Carter Williams is on the floor and it’s glaring. The Rockets are 8.3 points per 100 possessions better on offense when Williams sits. The reason for this is defenders are completely sagging off of him at the three-point line to help on better offensive threats and Williams hasn’t been able to make them pay.
One positive thing that Rockets fans can take away from this start is that it’s unlikely that Eric Gordon continues to play this poorly. Gordon looks like a complete shell of himself right now. In the past two games, he’s averaging 10.5 PPG on 28.9% true shooting with a -20.4 Net RTG. Gordon doesn’t look mentally all the way on the court as he’s passing up open looks, missing layups, and hesitating far too much for a player of his caliber. It’s unlikely this trend continues, but the Rockets will need him to shake out of it quick, as the will need his production the next two games without Harden.
For what it’s worth, the Rockets don’t seem to be too worried about the offensive side of the ball. “We're going to be a really good offense. I'm not worried about that”, says Mike D’Antoni.
“We've just got to work hard for one another defensively and offensively, it'll come,” echoes Gordon at Sunday’s practice.
Until the Rockets fix a lot of their issues, they should not be considered serious championship contenders. For now, Houston should simply strive to be a competitive basketball team. If they achieve competence, the conversation can shift back to contention, but not a moment sooner. We’re only five games in and a lot can happen, but the early returns are extremely discouraging for a team that achieved so much just a season ago.
Most Popular
SportsMap Emails
Are Awesome
Listen Live
Astros betting big on their biggest advantage tonight
Jul 8, 2025, 12:03 pm
Adding a player of Kevin Durant’s caliber was too valuable an opportunity for the Houston Rockets to pass up, even though it meant moving on from Jalen Green just four seasons after they drafted him second overall.
Durant was officially acquired from Phoenix on Sunday in a complicated seven-team transaction that sent Green and Dillon Brooks to the Suns and brought Clint Capela back to Houston from the Hawks.
General manager Rafael Stone is thrilled to add the future Hall of Famer, who will turn 37 in September, to a team which made a huge leap last season to earn the second seed in the Western Conference.
Asked Monday why he wanted to add Durant to the team, Stone smiled broadly before answering.
“He’s Kevin Durant,” Stone said. “He’s just — he’s really good. He’s super-efficient. He had a great year last year. He’s obviously not 30 anymore, but he hasn’t really fallen off and we just think he has a chance to really be impactful for us.”
But trading Green to get him was not an easy decision for Stone, Houston’s general manager since 2020.
“Jalen’s awesome, he did everything we asked,” Stone said. “He’s a wonderful combination of talent and work ethic along with being just a great human being. And any time that you have the privilege to work with someone who is talented and works really hard and is really nice, you should value it. And organizationally we’ve valued him tremendously, so yeah very hard.”
Green was criticized for his up-and-down play during the postseason when the Rockets were eliminated by the Warriors in seven games in the first round. But Green had improved in each of his four seasons in Houston, leading the team in scoring last season and playing all 82 games in both of the past two seasons.
Pressed for details about why Green's time was up in Houston, Stone wouldn't get into specifics.
“It’s the NBA and you can only do trades if a certain amount of money goes out and a certain amount comes in and there’s some positional overlap or at least overlap in terms of on ball presence,” he said. “And so that’s what the deal required.”
In Durant, the Rockets get a veteran of almost two decades who averaged 26.6 points and six rebounds a game last season and has a career average of 27.2 points and seven rebounds.
Houston loves the veteran experience and presence that Durant brings. Stone noted that the team had arranged for some of its players to work out with him in each of the past two offseasons.
“His work ethic is just awesome,” Stone said. “The speed at which he goes, not in a game … but the speed at which he practices and the intensity at which he practices is something that has made him great over the years and it started when he was very young. So of all the things that I hope rubs off, that’s the main one I think is that practice makes perfect. And I think one of the reasons he’s had such an excellent career is because of the intensity with which he works day in day out.”
Durant is a 15-time All-Star and four-time scoring champion, who was the Finals MVP twice. The former Texas Longhorn is one of eight players in NBA history to score at least 30,000 points and he won NBA titles in 2017 and 2018 with the Warriors.
Now he’ll join a team chasing its first NBA title since winning back-to-back championships in 1994-95.
“Everything has to play out, but we do — we like the fit,” Stone said. “We think it works well. We think he will add to us and we think we will help him.”