Biggest Takeaways from Houston Rockets' 1st Half of the Season
Halfway through the season is a good chance to stop and review where the Houston Rockets are at. What have we learned about them?
Last offseason, the prevailing view was that the Rockets had taken a step back. In an effort to acquire a star player like Chris Bosh or Carmelo Anthony, they jettisoned Jeremy Lin and Omer Asik with no immediate returns. Then they were spurned by the stars they sought out.
But now, the Rockets are 31-14, which is an improvement over last season when they were 29-16 at this point. How did they get here? What are they doing right, and what are they doing wrong?
These are the biggest takeaways from the first half of the season. The negative ones come before the positives, listed from least to most important.
The Rockets Need Another Shot Creator
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We’ll discuss James Harden and his incredible value later. For now, let’s look at what the Rockets’ biggest structural problem is: Harden is the only shot creator the team has.
As I wrote about here, I looked at which teams were most dependent on one player for their offense. Viewing data from players' personal pages at Basketball-Reference.com, I looked at points generated by assist, those which come from unassisted field goals or at the charity stripe.
I calculated which players had generated the highest percentage of their respective team’s offense.
Harden has generated 1,697 points, the most in the league. That’s 38.6 per game, which is also first. Finally, it’s 37.4 percent of all points the Rockets have scored, again, leading the league. That’s not what he does while he’s on the court—that’s total!
The off-court numbers are even more telling. When Harden isn’t playing, the Rockets’ offensive rating is an anemic 91.4, per NBA.com. Only the Philadelphia 76ers at 90.9 are worse. Being in the Sixers' neighborhood positively screams that they need another shot creator.
The Rockets do have a way to obtain one. Starting on Feb. 18 (when the trade restrictions are removed), they can combine Corey Brewer’s and/or Alexey Shved’s salaries with one another or with someone else's (perhaps Terrence Jones) to bring back a higher-value player. They also have the New Orleans Pelicans’ first-round pick this season to add to the package.
That might be enough to obtain Goran Dragic, particularly if the Oklahoma City Thunder have caught the Phoenix Suns for the last playoff spot by then. If not, there might be other players on the trading block whom the Rockets could look at.
Ultimately, it will be their undoing if they don’t get another creator.
Injuries Hurt
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To say that the Rockets have been bitten by the injury bug would be an understatement. It’s more like they've been swallowed by a fanged, 18-foot version of said insect.
To put things in perspective, their true starting five of Patrick Beverley, Harden, Trevor Ariza, Terrence Jones and Dwight Howard has played only two games. In part, that’s because Jones has only played four. But even with Donatas Motiejunas starting in his place, it only accounts for another 21. So, even their “backup plan” has less than half the starts.
Harden, Ariza and Motiejunas are the only three Rockets to play every game. Howard has missed 13 games—mostly with a knee issue. Beverley was out for 12 on a turned ankle.
Injuries have extended to the bench too. Rookie Kostas Papanikolaou was gone for nine with an injured knee. Isaiah Canaan missed a dozen games with assorted injuries before being sent to the Rockets' D-League affiliate, the Rio Grande Valley Vipers. Jason Terry missed three games.
And yet the Rockets are among the elite teams in spite of the problems. They may have been swallowed whole by the aforementioned giant injury bug, but they wrenched open its gigantic jowls and tore their way out of it. If they ever get healthy, watch out world.
Trevor Ariza Doesn’t Show Up in Box Scores
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A cursory look at Trevor Ariza’s numbers are disappointing. He’s averaging just 12.4 points, 5.4 rebounds and 2.2 assists. He’s only shooting 37.0 percent from the field and 32.4 percent from deep. His effective field-goal percentage is only 46.9 percent, down from 56.2 last season.
But every team needs a glue guy, and Ariza is one of the best in the league. The offense is better when Ariza’s on the court. That probably also has a lot to do with sharing more time with Harden.
But Ariza does have some ability to slash to the rim. The Rockets average 44.5 points in the paint per 100 possessions with him as opposed to 41.9 without him. In all, 50 of his 190 field goals have been layups. So, in spite of what his percentages suggest, he does have some value on offense.
But his defensive impact is massive. When he’s on the court, the Rockets' defensive rating is just 97.9, 6.2 better than when he sits. His defensive real plus-minus of 2.71 is the fourth-best among small forwards, per ESPN.com.
The difference Ariza makes surely shows up on the scoreboard and in the win column. It would be nice to see his shooting numbers go back up, but his defense more than makes up for it.
Defense Matters
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The reason the Rockets were able to survive the offseason personnel changes because of an accompanying personality switch. Last year, they focused more on scoring. This season, they’re trying to stop the other team from doing so.
They were the fourth-ranked offense and 12-best defense n 2013-14. That defense cost them when they gave up a series-ending three-point shot to Damian Lillard in the playoffs. But now that’s flipped. Their defense is fifth, and their offense is only 14th. And that turnabout has come in spite of the fact that Howard, the three-time winner of Defensive Player of the Year (2009-11), has missed so many games.
As mentioned on the previous slide, that change has a lot to do with the addition of Trevor Ariza, an elite wing-stopper who has habitually taken on the opponent's best perimeter player. But that’s not the totality of it.
Jon Krawczynski of The Associated Press explained in December that it’s also due to a combination of assistant coach J.B. Bickerstaff's getting more involved in the defense and the Rockets’ changed attitude. According to Bickerstaff:
"The last play in Portland was kind of a microcosm of our entire season. There was miscommunication and it ended with a wide open look for Damian that cost us.
The biggest thing is the guys have bought in and are committed on that end of the floor. Now you hear guys in tight games saying, 'We're one of the best defensive teams in the league. Let's get a stop. This is what we do.'
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There are schematic differences. The Rockets are extremely aggressive in closing out on threes, aggressively guarding the ball-handler, pressing him toward the sideline. But even that is largely a part of the overall more aggressive mentality. The Rockets now identify themselves with their defense.
The Rockets purposed to be an improved defense this season, and because of it, they’re winning, even when their offense struggles.
James Harden Is the 1st-Half MVP
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MVP always elicits a lot of discussion about who should win and why, and much of that revolves around what the award is meant to represent. Some feel it should belong to the “best” player, but the award is for the most valuable, not the best.
To understand what the award means, we need to define "value," and to do that, we need to remove it from the context of basketball.
Conceptually, it is impossible for one person to determine value. If I invent the “smidget,” I can set a price on it, but it only has that much value if someone is willing to pay me for it. Someone can offer a price, but that’s only the value if I agree to sell it for the offering price.
As more people buy and sell the smidgets, the value (price) adjusts. The market, then, not the individual determines what value is.
Now, to follow that to the NBA, value is established by its own kind of market, which is the voters for the award.
So, when asking about the most valuable player, we have to ask about what the “market” values? I looked at the history of the award, and voters primarily seem to be motivated by three things: player quality, winning and narrative.
Since the merger of the NBA and ABA prior to the 1976-77 season, there have been 38 award winners, and the MVP has been top-five in win shares 34 times. However, the MVP has only been the leader 22 times.
Ergo, being one of the best players is important, but being the “best” is not.
In the same span, the winner has come from a team with one of the five-best records 35 times and never on a team that was below eighth (in the NBA, not the conference). And the winner has been on a top-four team all but six times.
This standard virtually removes LeBron James and Anthony Davis from realistic consideration.
In fact, there are currently two players who are on top-five teams who are also top-five in win shares: James Harden and Stephen Curry.
Finally, there’s the narrative aspect, and a large part of that has to do with who else is on the team. Of the 38 winners, not teammates received votes on 23 occasions. Players are deemed to have more “value” if they have less help from their team.
And while Curry has his “Splash Brother,” Klay Thompson, lighting up the world with 37-point quarters, Harden is doing more to carry the Rockets offense than any player in the league—and he’s doing so with his teammates wading through a plethora of injuries.
If we’re defining value the way history always has, it’s hard to deny that Harden is the NBA’s first-half MVP.
Stats for this article were obtained from Basketball-Reference.com and NBA.com/Stats unless otherwise stated.
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