Why the Rockets are the NBA’s most surprising contenders

The Rockets’ attempt to become a serious team began in earnest last season on the defensive end. It’s no surprise that their attempt to take the next step this season — from serious to scary, from runner to contender — started there, too.

“Every team that’s won a championship is usually a top-five defense,” Rockets head coach Ime Udoka recently told Michael Pina of The Ringer. “This is non-negotiable for me.”

Building a high-level defense — which Udoka and Co. have done, as Houston enters Thursday’s game with the Warriors ranked second in defensive efficiency, according to Cleaning the Glass — sets a high floor. In an age of pace, space and unfettered 3-point bombardment, this is the other end of the court that often determines a team’s ceiling.

Twenty of the last 21 NBA champions were in the top 10. The one that didn’t, the 2021-22 Warriors, had Stephen Curry… which, you know, is basically the same thing. These Dubs also scored 116.4 points per 100 possessions outside of timeouts in the playoffs; this would have been the second-best offense in the league during the regular season.

These Rockets aren’t built around a single-megawatt offensive force like Curry, Giannis Antetokounmpo, a healthy Kawhi Leonard or Nikola Jokić. They’re not built around an armada of shooters like the Celtics team Udoka coached, or a crushing tandem like the LeBron James/Anthony Davis duo that led the Lakers to the 2020 title. year Alperen Şengün offers as convincing an impersonation of the Joker as in the game, but he has seen his shooting efficiency decline both inside and outside the arc. After five straight 20-plus point performances to open the season, former No. 2 overall pick Jalen Green declined again, shooting a career-worst 47% from 2-point range and 33.1% from 3 with a barely positive assist. -turnover rate. Fred VanVleet remains a rock-solid setter, but he is missing more than two-thirds of his triples.

Houston is off to a fantastic start with a 15-7 record, a game and a half out of first place in the Western Conference. But that lack of firepower could end up being the dividing line between contenders and pretenders for Udoka’s club, which ranks 26th in team field success percentage.And3-point percentage, dead last in assist rate and only ninth in offensive efficiency.

…Wait a second. What?

That’s right: despite the fact that only one rotation player shoots 50% from the field (Amen Thompson) and one rotation player shoots above league average from 3-point land ( Dillon Brooks), and despite being in the bottom four in both effective field goals. percentage (which explains that 3-pointers are worth more than 2 points) and true shooting percentage (which takes into account the accuracy of 2-pointers, 3-pointers and free throws), Houston scores 115.1 points per 100 possessions outside of trash time this season — which is tied with the resurgent Bucks for ninth on offense, according to Cleaning the Glass.

Which, given these shooting numbers, begs the question: uh, how?

It turns out that the first step to building a high-level offense without high-level shooting is to rely on your high-level team. defense.

Led by All-Defensive Team Brooks and newly dubbed “Terror Twins” Thompson and Tari Eason, the Rockets’ rotation is overflowing with wings with long, athletic, mean arms and magnetic hands. They don’t just get stops; They break up offensive moves, ranking seventh in blocks, 10th in steals, 11th in deflections and 12th in opponent turnover rate. They also prioritize putting periods at the end of their defensive possessions, ranking 10th in defensive rebound rate.

And once the ball is recovered, the Rockets launch:

Houston scores just 92 points per 100 half-court possessions – 25th in the NBA. However, in transition, when you are ahead of the defense or the defense backtracks and is unstable? This amounts to 127.6 points per 100 – and 140.3 points per 100 after a flight. When you have a way to take your attack from terrible to great, it’s a good idea to do it as often as possible; In a related story, only four teams attack in transition more frequently than Udoka’s Rockets, and only Denver scores more fast break points per game.

Even if you prioritize picking up the pace, you’ll still spend at least three-quarters of your offensive possessions playing in the half-court, against stopped defenses – which, as we just noted, doesn’t isn’t exactly the strong point of a Rockets offense that struggles to shoot straight. A good second step to building that top offense, then: get a lot of shots.

Houston leads the NBA in field goal attempts per game, thanks in part to elite turnover avoidance – after finishing last in turnover rate in the two seasons before Fred VanVleet’s arrival, they have placed sixth and fourth since the arrival of the self-confident leader – and partly to the absolutely voracious marauding of the offensive glass:

All of Houston’s centers – Şengün, Steven Adams and Jock Landale – can either root in front of the rim or bulldoze potential performers underneath to get their preferred position. All of Houston’s fast-twitch, tarantula-armed forwards and swingmen – Thompson, Eason, Jabari Smith Jr., Cam Whitmore et al. – having the quickness to weave between opponents in the paint, the jump to get the ball over them and the instinct to follow the shot, whether it’s theirs or someone else’s.

While some coaches would seek to tone down this aggression and send everyone sprinting to avoid quick baskets, Udoka asked his charges to relentlessly pursue misses. The logic is twofold. On the one hand, making it harder for opponents to get the ball back makes it harder for them to punish you with it. (“We thought you could crash at a high rate, and that’s almost the first layer of your transition defense,” Udoka told Pina.)

Next: the reward of another bite of apple far outweighs the risk. The Rockets have gobbled up an NBA-best 34.5 percent of available offensive rebounds this season and have turned those rebounds into 17.7 second-chance points per game, second only to the Hornets. Houston’s score of 106.6 points per 100 on putbacks, nearly 15 points per 100 above its overall half-court offensive rating, and a major increase in results for a team that must work its magic in the scoring margins. .

Three Rockets rank in the NBA’s top 25 in offensive rebounding rate: Şengün and the Terror Twins, 6-foot-8 Eason and 6-foot-7 Thompson, who throw themselves at the backboard at speeds and in angles inaccessible to most others. humans. This trio has only played 146 minutes together this season; In those, Houston made an absurd 38.4% of its misses.

Eason’s production this season deserves a brief sidebar. After missing most of last season due to a tumor in his left shin, the 23-year-old forward is putting up eye-popping per-minute numbers off the Houston bench: 17.8 points, 10.1 rebounds, 3, 3 steals, 1.7 assists and 1.6 blocks per 36 minutes of work. The third-year pro grabs offensive rebounds on over 10% of Houston’s possessions and comes away with blocks and steals on over 3% of Houston’s possessions. the adversaries possessions. Only two other guys in NBA history have done that…and they’re Hakeem Olajuwon and David Robinson.

This team-wide relentlessness and commitment to pounding the basket — Houston’s seventh-most in share of its shots coming straight to the rim — has another benefit downfield: The Rockets generate a plot whistles.

Only the Magic, Grizzlies and Nuggets commit more fouls per game than Houston, with Bull-in-a-china-shop Sengün leading the pack with 5.5 per game – tied with Kevin Durant for eighth in the league. NBA among players who have made at least 10 appearances — and only the Nuggets attempt more free throws per game. Only the Magic and Nuggets spend a higher share of their offensive possessions on bonuses than Houston.

This is important because, as Owen Phillips recently noted in The F5, “on average, accessing the bonus is worth about two offensive rating points.” This season, it’s about the difference between being a top-10 offense and a down-10 infraction – which is a very big difference, especially for a team with very big projects.

“The goal is to go deep,” VanVleet recently told Kelly Iko of The Athletic. “And not just to make the playoffs, to make a real run.”

A true run will require true offensive creativity and cohesion: the ingenuity to find multiple paths to points when the game slows and is stressful, the know-how to generate good looks against the best defenses, and the skill to overthrow them. Whether these Rockets can develop that — whether this top-10 offense is solid or smoky — is one of the most interesting questions in the NBA right now.

You can go a long way beating people on the offensive glass, taking care of the ball, forcing turnovers and getting out in transition. On the way all the path, however, requires more.