Houston Rockets' Biggest Red Flags Entering This Season
The preseason has answered some questions for the Houston Rockets, but there have been some red flags raised too.
Their major emphasis has been on the defense. With the departure of Chandler Parsons (free agency) and Jeremy Lin (trade), the Rockets took hits to their offense, and they expect to compensate for that by making it harder for the other team to score.
Overall, they’ve shown progress in that regard, yielding just 96.0 points with a defensive rating of 97.6, according to RealGM.com. That has sparked the Rockets to a 5-2 preseason record.
While that is encouraging, it is still just preseason. And there are some legitimate concerns raised, even after accounting for the preparatory nature of exhibition contests. These flags are listed here in order of how concerned the Rockets need to be about them.
5. Can James Harden Maintain His New Defensive Awareness?
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This might be breaking news to some, but James Harden has actually played defense this preseason. He’s not looking like he’s going to be a first-team All-Defensive selection or anything, but he’s looking….awake?
Harden has never been a bad on-the-ball defender. It’s the times when the man with the ball is not directly in front of him that are problematic. This preseason the difference is that those things are the exception now and not the norm.
Yes, there have been times where he’s relapsed into old habits, like when he fights so hard to go over a screen that he could almost escape from a paper bag. Or when he seems to forget that he’s on an NBA court playing defense and not in his kitchen waiting for the microwave to pop the popcorn.
Most of the time he’s been engaged. When his man doesn't have the ball, he remains cognoscente of his existence and location on the court. When he gets beaten, he doesn’t just watch the player go to the basket. He actually chases after him.
Even Harden knows what his failing is, telling Sam Amick of USA Today Sports:
"It's not a matter of whether I can or can't play defense. It's just a matter of me focusing for 48 minutes throughout a game and making sure that I'm always alert on both ends of the floor … It's up to me to go out there and show my leadership, to show that I can play both ends of the floor at a high level and just do it. If I have that approach, we're going to go a long ways.
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Wanting to be better is half the battle, and it seems that Harden is there—for now. And that’s where the concern is at. Because it’s being addressed it’s the least of the red flags, but it has to be one. Is this new awareness going to stick through the doldrums of the regular season? Will he continue to improve? Or will he relapse into bad habits in the dog days of March?
4. Who Will Be the 1st Scorer off the Bench?
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The Rockets' bench is logging just 87.88 points per 48 minutes as a unit this preseason, which is 22nd in the NBA. While there is a lot of noise to that number, it can’t be glossed over.
James Harden has missed two games. Dwight Howard has played in just three. Jason Terry, the 2009 Sixth Man of the Year, dressed just once. All of those things are going to impact the bench minutes and ergo the bench's scoring.
That said, there’s still the big concern: Who is the go-to guy off the bench?
Terry played just 570 minutes last year due to injuries and isn’t likely to be a bastion of health at 37. Ish Smith drives the ball well, but his career 39.2 field-goal percentage isn’t something to be enamored with. Troy Daniels can shoot like a young Ray Allen but doesn’t have the same ability to put the ball on the floor.
That leaves Isaiah Canaan, the backup point guard and leading bench scorer for the Rockets this preseason. He’s averaged 9.2 points in 12.2 minutes a game. He’s garnered those buckets efficiently as well, notching a 59.9 true shooting percentage and 51.5 effective field-goal percentage.
All that sounds great, but Canaan is also the team’s backup point guard, and he’s averaging just 1.8 assists per game, which touches on another red flag we’ll come back to in a later slide. Let’s just say: Canaan might currently be the best scorer off the bench but not the best one to do the scoring.
Whatever the case, the Rockets’ bench production is a weakness. Considering its youth and how the group is still adjusting to playing together, expect it to improve as the season progresses. But early on the Rockets’ starters will have to make up the difference.
3. How Fast Can Kostas Papanikolaou Adapt to the NBA?
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Kostas Papanikolaou is the only true small forward the Rockets have off the bench, which makes him a critical piece of the puzzle. How quickly he adapts to the NBA game will make a difference to the success of the team.
Papanikolaou has flair. He also has a nice resume he brings over from Greece. According to Bleacher Report’s Bryant Knox:
"At this point in his professional career, Papanikolaou is a two-time Euroleague champion. He's also a Greek League champion and a Spanish League champion from 2012 and 2014, respectively.
On top of the team success he's achieved, he was the MVP of the 2009 FIBA Europe Under-20 Championship, the MVP of the Greek Youth All-Star Game the same year and the Euroleague Rising Star of 2013.
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So, he’s established that he can play in Europe, but can he prove himself in the NBA? And how long will it take him to make the adjustment? He’s shown flashes of what he can be, demonstrating he can score in creative ways, but he’s struggled in many ways too.
His preseason stats are not overly impressive. His player efficiency rating is just 10.87, his effective field-goal percentage is 38.3 and his true shooting percentage is 43.8. Defensively, he tends to get into foul trouble when opponents attack him.
He is a rookie with seven preseason games of experience under his belt. He has much to learn.
The question isn’t so much whether he can pick things up as it is how long it will take him to do so. Because the Rockets don’t have a lot of small forward help, though, if his learning curve is a slow one, it will be worrisome.
2. Who Will Be the Backup Center?
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The previous three concerns aren’t on the level of the last two.
The first three are like when you’re going on a three-week vacation and right when your plane is taking off you remember you forgot to take out the garbage. Things are going to stink for a while, but it’s just temporary.
The last two are on the level of a semi-truck barreling down on you at 70 miles per hour. If you don’t do something about it now, you’re a dead man.
There are four bigs who will come off the bench: Jeff Adrien, Joey Dorsey, Donatas Motiejunas and Tarik Black.
At just 6’7”, Adrien is too small to be a center and will play power forward, leaving three candidates to spell Howard.
At present, the favorite appears to be Motiejunas, who is an honest 7-footer (as opposed to one of those guys who is actually 6’9” but listed at 7’0”). He has the size, but his style of play is more disposed to a stretch 4.
Even at power forward, he hasn’t been stellar in using his size advantage. He averages just 7.7 rebounds and was just 53-of-90 at the rim last year. His PER for the preseason is 7.62.
Dorsey is a bit short for the 5 at 6’8”, but he weighs in at a solid 275 pounds. Originally drafted by the Rockets, he was traded to the Sacramento Kings and eventually washed out of the league. After bopping around Europe for a couple of years, he earned a name as a defensive specialist and came back to Houston.
He has not fulfilled expectations thus far. His PER is a paltry 7.86. That said, he’s had both injury and rust issues, so there’s room to improve.
Then, there’s Tarik Black, an undrafted rookie out of Kansas who is 6’11” and 250. He has been playing the best of the candidates, posting a PER of 13.74. In fact, he’s outplayed the other contenders to the point that when Howard sat out of the Orlando Magic game on Oct. 22, Black got the start.
Of the four players in question, Black is the one with the size and skills to be a center in the NBA.
The only problem is that he’s not on a guaranteed contract, and the others are. If you’re looking for someone to rescue Houston from the onrushing truck, Black is the man.
But with the Rockets carrying 16 guaranteed contracts, that’s going to require sending two of them to the D-League, and there might be a reluctance to do that.
1. Where Will the Passing Come From?
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The Rockets’ biggest concern has to be their passing. They are averaging just 17.29 dimes per game, one full assist fewer than the 29th-ranked Toronto Raptors.
According to Basketball-Reference.com, since the 1956-57 season, when the Syracuse Nationals averaged 17.8, only the 1998-99 Atlanta Hawks have had fewer than 18 assists and a winning record. It is imperative for the Rockets to figure this one out.
Considering Daryl Morey is the general manager, this is a surprise. Assisted shots are more likely to go in than shots off the dribble. Ian Levy of Nylon Calculus writes:
"Last season, according to the NBA’s SportVU Player Tracking Statistics, teams shot almost five more attempts per game off the catch than they did off the dribble, which is understandable – catch-and-shoot attempts generated a league-wide average effective field-goal percentage of 51.6%, far superior to that of pull-up attempts, 40.4%.
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Since it’s a statistical certainty that you’re better off shooting on the catch-and-shoot, it’s a surprise that the Rockets don’t have a proven facilitator on their roster. Harden is the best they have, but he’s bearing enough of the offensive burden already.
Unlike the center situation, there’s not a ready solution already on the roster. Starting point guard Patrick Beverley has a career average of just 2.8 assists per game. Smith, Daniels and Canaan (we can tap concern No. 4 back in now) are all able to score, but none of them are proven passers. Their bench is averaging just 14.8 dimes per 48 minutes.
If Canaan can focus more energy on setting up the shooters the Rockets have and less on establishing his own shot, that could be a help.
Or, the answer may lie in the $8.37 million Jeremy Lin trade exception. The most obvious notion is making a run at Rajon Rondo; however, the Rockets have no realistic way of assembling the salaries needed to obtain him. Other than that, there aren’t a lot of pure point guards on the market.
Their best option could be the reigning Rookie of the Year, Michael Carter-Williams. He is on the trading block. He averaged 6.3 assists in his rookie year. With 253 of his 427 field-goal attempts coming from either the restricted area or the three-point line, he fits Houston’s “no long twos” mantra.
He may not be the perfect option, but he might be the best one available. A package built around Nick Johnson and the New Orleans Pelicans’ protected first-round pick obtained in the Omer Asik trade should be enough to get him.
Unless otherwise noted, statistics courtesy of RealGM.com, Basketball-Reference.com and ESPN.com.
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