Houston, we have a problem
After Houston’s second straight conference semifinals elimination and its third in four years, it’s clear that something just isn’t working for the Rockets.
On Sunday afternoon, per Adrian Wojnarowski, coach Mike D’Antoni signalled his departure from the franchise after an unforseen yet anticlimactic four years as head coach of the Rockets.
Thanks to GM Daryl Morey’s analytics driven philosophy, the Rockets constructed teams that completely tipped the scales of basketball, experimenting with lesser known playstyles and placing them at the forefront of their offense.
As the league began its three-point paradigm shift, the Rockets led the pack, attempting more threes than any other team over D’Antoni’s four year tenure. The Rockets “no midrange or bust” system reached never before seen extremes, with this season being no exception. This year, Morey planted the seeds of his “no big men” approach, which took small ball to another level. Houston traded away Clint Capela, opting for P.J. Tucker to play the five at a modest 6'5".
And for the most part, it worked.
D’Antoni’s Rockets, led by prolific scorer James Harden, went 217–102 in four seasons— the winningest record in the NBA during his tenure. Houston made the playoffs all four years and reached the top of the conference in the 2017–18 season with a league leading 65–17 record. They even racked up numerous individual accolades, as D’Antoni and Eric Gordon were voted in as Coach of the Year and Sixth Man of the Year respectively in 2017, Morey recognized as the league’s top executive in 2018, and James Harden had bagged 2018 MVP honors to go with his three consecutive scoring titles in the past three seasons.
Yet, despite all this hardware, the Rockets now enter another offseason without acquiring the most elusive accolade of them all: the Larry O’Brien trophy.
In actuality, it would be unfair to not give any credit to the Rockets. Trapped in the shadows of the Golden State Warriors, the Rockets continued to stay competitive in an era where many other teams simply chose to wait out the Warriors dynasty. In fact, the Rockets pushed the Warriors to a seven game battle in 2018, with many believing at the time that if it weren’t for Chris Paul’s Game 5 hamstring injury, the Rockets would’ve advanced to the finals. Nevertheless, Houston missed a NBA record 27 straight threes in Game 7 and were promptly eliminated, the notorious statistic now synonymous with the team.
Houston continued to stay competitive in ensuing years, as they reached the top of their division in 2019 and 2020. Still, division title or not, the Rockets were elminated in the conference semifinals in both years. Now, without a single finals appearance to their name the past decade and with D’Antoni’s exit, it has to be asked: has the Rockets title window effectively closed?
The Lakers gentleman sweep of the Rockets on Sunday was the latest reminder of this question. After taking the first game, the Rockets were quickly projected as favorites to win the series, with FiveThirtyEight’s statistical driven forecast giving them a generous 26% chance to emerge as NBA champions — the highest odds in the Western Conference. Yet, in a tale of statistical irony, the Lakers promptly won four straight, leaving the projections and analytics in the dust.
As telling as the numbers were, it still would’ve been naive to give the Rockets a fair chance to win the series. Let’s take a look at when and how the Rockets effectively lost the season.
Just as how Rockets have lived by the three on the offensive end, they make sure to shut it down on the defensive side as well. In conjunction with their small ball philosophy, the Rockets maximize their defensive utility by employing a switch-everything scheme, a strategy instated by former assistant coach Jeff Bzdelik, who was fired last year.
One of the downsides of a switch heavy defense is that it is largely ineffective against great isolation players and when there are significant mismatches. In this play, the Lakers abuse both facets, using a handoff to switch Danuel House onto Anthony Davis who easily nets the turnaround jumper despite the double team. No matter how versatile a defender may be, it’s extremely difficult to make up for the height advantage that players like Davis possess. As expected, it allowed Davis to feast throughout the series, as he shot a blistering 66% from the field.
Despite this, defensive success still usually comes to teams that employ this defensive strategy. What those teams lack in size, they often make up in effort. However, this was far from the case for the Rockets in this round:
Here, Westbrook tries to do too much on the offensive end and causes an unforced turnover. Instead of hustling back to stop the fast break, he’s late to pick up Markieff Morris and is lucky that his teammates have stopped Alex Caruso from pushing the ball. However, for some reason, Westbrook inexcusably lets Morris cut to the basket for an easy dunk off a dime from LeBron James. While Westbrook may have been recovering from injury, effort shouldn’t be something that needs to be healed.
On the offensive end, the Rockets continued to struggle. In order to neutralize James Harden, the Lakers doubled him on almost every opportunity, taking away his effectiveness on the perimeter and in turn, forcing him to pass out to his less competent teammates.
With Danny Green, LeBron, and even Kentavious Caldwell-Pope helping to stop Harden, he’s forced to pass out to Robert Covington, who has, for the most part, only been a spot up player for the Rockets. In fact, nearly 57% of Covington’s possessions during the regular season were spot ups. And he’s not alone — every other player on the Rockets not named Harden or Westbrook had at least 30% of their possessions be spot ups. Without a proper handle, Covington is forced to pass out to P.J. Tucker who swings it to Westbrook, who rather than making the additional pass, takes the shot as a 25.8% three point shooter.
On some occasions, Harden is able to anticipate the double team and the Rockets are able to have actual movement with the ball. Unfortunately, Gordon misses the three and due to the Rockets lack of defensive effort, they give up a touchdown pass from LeBron to AD with an and-one.
The signs of the Rockets defeat were always there. Their lack of offensive diversity was in the name of their game: the Rockets ran isolation plays a league leading 20% of the time (the next closest team were the Trail Blazers at only 9.6%). Their frequency of pick and roll plays were just 9.8%!! and 4.3% for the ball handler and roll man, respectively — both last in the league.
It’s no surprise that the Rockets offense breaks down once Harden doesn’t have the ball. His teammates are unable to create a shot on their own, and even the ones that can (looking at you, Westbrook), do so at an inefficient rate — he’s only generating 0.87 points per isolation, at an average 43.3% effective field goal percentage.
That’s not to say that the Rockets do not have an alternative game plan, but more so that D’Antoni has been reluctant to change the matchups that had dictated the series. As head coach, the onus is on D’Antoni to adjust his strategy instead of hammering the same ineffective plays over and over again. In all of the Rockets’ losses, Harden has been forced to pass out of doubles to roll men who just do not know what to do with the ball from there. You wouldn’t trust Robert Covington, P.J. Tucker, or even Jeff Green to handle the ball in open space, yet why does Mike D’Antoni make it his staple play?
However, none of this absolves Harden of blame, either. Having run the franchise for the past eight years, Harden has been Houston’s leading points per game scorer. This season, he won the scoring title with an impressive 34.3 PPG. In addition, Harden was second in the league in fourth quarter points, only trailing Trae Young with 8.7 points per fourth quarter. However, in the playoffs, Harden is ranked 23rd in fourth quarter points with only 5.5. In the fourth quarter of game 4, he didn’t even attempt a single field goal. Harden has been disappearing in playoff games, and at this point it’s a disappointing look for a player with his experience and resume, and troubling for the Rockets as he has three years left on his contract.
Now, even without D’Antoni in Houston’s future, the Rockets problems aren’t yet over. In most cases, teams would opt to blow everything up, acquire draft picks and expiring contracts. However, with last year’s forced trade of Chris Paul for Russell Westbrook, their draft capital has been depleted and instead of just two more years of a more effective CP3 (even with Harden’s chemistry issues with him), the Rockets are most likely stuck with one-dimensional Westbrook for three more years and $133 million on the books. In addition, the Rockets already have expiring contracts in P.J Tucker, Austin Rivers, and Ben McLemore, making the process of acquiring draft picks even more challenging.
Their ownership is tacky, with Tilman Fertitta starting to become notorious for his relative financial woes and reluctance to spend. Since acquiring the team in 2017, the Rockets have avoided the luxury tax, which came at the cost of not resigning Trevor Ariza, a pivotal piece in their conference finals series against the Warriors. They also managed to shed a significant portion of D’Antoni’s coaching team, including the aforementioned switch-everything defense wizard Jeff Bzdelik.
The future for Houston isn’t quite bright at this point. With no title in sight, it’s been a disappointing end to what could’ve been a rewarding four years. It’s a frustrating outcome that the Rockets now have to face.
*All statistics are sourced from Basketball-Reference and NBA Stats
*I do not own any photos or videos of NBA players in this article, they are all under the ownership of the NBA and are used for education purposes
