The notable 13.4% mark.
It’s the first Five Out of the regular season!
Sorry I haven’t brought you more Five Outs so far, but I’ll try to do more moving forward, circumstances permitting in my life.
One – Patience
Many people seem fairly put out with a team that’s 8-4 and currently fifth in the Bestern Conference. I include myself at times in “Many People”. It’s still important to remember that the Rockets are a young team. We may have been obsessing about, for instance, Jalen Green’s shortcomings for three plus years, but that doesn’t make him 26 years old. Or it only does in NBA fan dog years, or something.
There are two veteran starters on this team. The combined ages of those two guys (at their upcoming birthdays) is 60. The combined age of the other three starters is 65. The point being, they’re still very young, and still developing. So while we may want to see the fireworks now, and to an extent we are, in a very good Western Conference, this is not The Big Finish, or anything close, for the Rockets Core # (number of players in core).
Two – Frustration
While patience with players is in order, is it called for with coaches as much? What, exactly, is the Rockets offense besides a bunch of high pick and rolls? Other teams all use the same playbook on defense against the Rockets, or at least the good ones do. It’s this:
- Blitz the ballhandlers on the high PNR.
- Double whomever gets the dribble handoff at the top of the three point line.
- Crash all other defenders into the paint, and stay there, stopping both drivers, and Sengun.
- Dare the Rockets to beat you with jumpshooting.
So far the Rockets are pretty far away from beating anyone with jumpshooting. Boston by comparison, has the fewest paint attempts in the NBA, while being arguably the best team. Whomever was teaching Boston to shoot didn’t leave Boston with Ime Udoka.
Three – Use Your Best Player
Right now the best player on the Rockets is Alperen Sengun, and it’s not particularly close. The Rockets really need to find a way to get him some easier looks, or set him up to run actions out of the high post. It’s been done before, by better offensive teams than these Rockets.
This week, against an admittedly dreadful Wizards team, the Rockets somehow had left the game in doubt. Until the last bit of the fourth quarter when they fed Sengun. Between him scoring in the paint, from three, and putting back offensive rebounds, the lead, almost instantly ballooned from 6 to 13 points.
For once, the Rockets rode the hot hand, instead of immediately setting up a look for someone else to miss a shot after a basket or two from Sengun. The Rockets may want to be a collective offensively, but sometimes it’s better to just score the ball.
Also, Ime, please, when something is working, let it work. It doesn’t matter if Jabari Smith is overdue for more minutes, or Steven Adams is sitting there. You don’t need to immediatly break something that’s going well. Let success happen and change failed lineups more quickly.
Four – Tari Time?
One of the easiest fixes for the Rockets right now is simply More Tari. Right now, we’re seeing shades of Kawhi Leonard, as Tari simply takes the ball from a player at mid court and goes for a dunk. He did that multiple times this week. He has a more robust offensive game than previously suspected by many. He can usually make corner three pointers.
Basically, the Rockets need to get his minutes up to about 36 per game, and it really doesn’t matter whose he takes, aside from Sengun.
Five – The Closers
Is the best closing lineup: Sengun, Green, Eason, Thompson, Brooks? It really might be. The combination of Amen Thompson and Peso Eason on the two best offensive players of another team is just overwhelming in most cases. Even if Brooks and Green aren’t the defenders Thompson and Eason are, they’re not bad. (No, really, Jalen is one of the NBA’s better one-on-one defenders at this point.).
Switching onto anyone in that lineup isn’t really good news for most opponents on offense. It’s a hard lineup for the opposition to hunt mismatches, especially as Amen and Tari are good enough defenders to help anyone, and get back to their man.