We’re On The Job. Our Rates Are Low.
For the purposes of this piece, let’s pretend, or role-play, or in pseudo-corporate terms, investigate, manifest and articulate a strategic vision, If you’ll join in, we’ll pretend we’ve been hired as consultants to the Rockets, who want to “Go From Good To Great.”, or whatever the current buzzwords for that might be.
The Rockets, for our purposes, are seeking excellence, and hope that an outside voice, our voice, might help them achieve more of it.
When an organization of people largely does a crucial part of their job well, and a few people do that job poorly, we tend to place the blame on the individual. Let’s assume the people doing poorly are demonstrably making an effort to do the job well. In that case, we tend to believe there’s a reason for it their failure achieve. It might just be inexperience, it could be they are poorly lead, or managed, or they might just be intrinsically unsuited for tasks demanded of them.
Right now, the Houston Rockets players are doing roughly one half of their job, play NBA defense, very well indeed. They’re a top three defense in an NBA that features a possibly historically excellent defense in Oklahoma City, and not terribly far behind them. It might be possible to improve the defense, but as honest consultants we believe any gains with defense are probably marginal, and not where we should spend most of our time.
Instead, we must look at the offense, particularly when it comes to shooting the basketball, the Rockets are frankly not good. They mask this to an extent with a very high offensive rebounding rate, and with a good attack in transition against most opponents. The easy scoring in transition, the extra attempts to score from offensive rebounds, boost scoring. They do not, however, address what appears to be the elephant in the room: shooting.
The Rockets, as a whole, as a team, are bad at shooting. I’ve included a table so you, valued member of our basketball consulting team, can see for yourself just how bad at shooting, especially three point shooting, they are.
www.basketball-reference.com
The Rockets are bad at shooting despite having four highly regarded shooting prospects drafted recently and quite high in the draft. Literally none of those prospects currently shoot the ball all that well. Those prospects are Jalen Green, Jabari Smith Jr., Cam Whitmore and Reed Sheppard. Look especially at the shooting numbers of those players, and also Alperen Sengun, and Tari Eason, as all of those players were Rockets draft picks, and ostensibly developed as shooters by the Rockets.
The two better shooters, Dillon Brooks, and Aaron Holiday, are players who arrived as veterans, and were mostly developed as shooters elsewhere.
When a whole organization largely fails to do well at crucial tasks, we tend not to blame the members of the organization charged with the task. We might ask if those people have all necessary credentials and abilities required for the work. If we think those people do, in fact, possess what we believe are the necessary abilities to accomplish the task, we tend to blame their failure to do so on management.
It’s fair to say shooting the ball is a crucial skill in the NBA. The Rockets, thus far, have failed to develop their young players into great, good, or even above average shooters. This is year four for Jalen Green and Alperen Sengun. We must question not only the shooting instruction of the previous coaching staff of Stephen Silas, but also of Ime Udoka.
As a fictional consultant, I must state significant concern not only with the results seen with the new coaching staff in terms of development of shooters but with head coach Ime Udoka. Thus far, Udoka has shown a near-complete unwillingness to publicly associate himself and his coaching staff’s efforts to coach offense with the actual results of that offense in action. “The Players Miss Shots” we often hear. We hear little, to nothing, about how, when, or why this might improve.
It seems unlikely that four players considered elite scoring, if not shooting, prospects should all be rather bad and shooting and scoring with efficiency. One concern is that too much effort and resources are being devoted to defense. The players are perhaps expending too much effort defending, and not enough scoring. We will note that some wins would be far easier to achieve with more, and easier, scoring, rather than requiring nearly perfect defense, by NBA standards.
Does the blame here rest solely upon the young players, or must the coaching staff take some, or perhaps any, responsibility? (One player, Cam Whitmore has gone from shooting 36% from three last season to 5% this season. This is…alarming. Out of sight isn’t out of mind.)
Another concern is that the “Shooting Coach By Committee” approach does not appear to be working, if judged by on court results. It could be that there is no one who in the end takes responsibility for the Rockets shooting. It could be that no one is actually a very good shooting coach, or it could be that hearing multiple voices, if that is indeed the case, might tend to confuse the players.
In any case, the results speak for themselves one quarter way through Ime Udoka’s and company’s second season. The defense is superb, the offense is nothing close to superb, and mostly thrives through high-effort, low-percentage, methods.
Our recommendation for a team with high aspirations is to hire a proven, dedicated shooting coach, if not a coach of overall offensive efforts as well, and make sure head coach Udoka understands their importance.
The Rockets are a very good team, one that trades on defense and effort. It is our belief that Rockets are excellently lead in those regards. When it comes to the other half of the game, the picture is far more clouded, and in the absence of any improved results, especially with shooting, executive management, and ownership, are obligated to take action to attempt to improve matters.