“DQ” – “Disaster Quarter”, Not Dairy Queen, Strikes Again
24-10, 38-20, 44-20. – This is the downside of the “Jekyll and Hyde” Rockets in a nutshell.
Those numbers aren’t a locker combination, they are the quarter scores that more or less doomed the Rockets in three losses this season, to the Spurs, Warriors and Thunder, respectively. One was in the first quarter, two were in the second.
The Rockets lost by 19 points tonight. They won or tied the other three quarters of the game, though admittedly after falling behind. (The Thunder didn’t seem to slacken their effort until late 4th quarter, though.)
It’s difficult to do a recap of an entire game, when three quarters of a game are very competitive, and the outcome would seem to be in doubt, and in one quarter the Rockets have the doors simply blown off them in utter futility.
I think it’s important to note though that three of the Rockets four losses haven’t featured lost quarters, but utter disaster quarters. Now, to be fair to the Rockets, they damn near came back and won it against the Warriors and Spurs.
The Thunder are no worse than the second best team in the NBA, and they wouldn’t be having any “make up 31 point deficit to take a brief lead” stuff, though.
The disaster quarters are the Rockets biggest problem right now, the separator between “Decent” and “Very Good”.
In tonight’s second quarter we saw a combination of the Thunder simply not missing much of anything, and the Rockets hardly hitting anything.
This isn’t an exaggeration. The Thunder went 15-19 from the field, and 9 of 9 from the FT line in the quarter.
Was the defense terrible? Not really. Sure, there were some open shots, or missed assignments, but the Rockets weren’t playing terrible, or lackadaisical, defense. The Thunder just made nearly every shot.
The Rockets on the other hand basically reversed that, with 4 field goals, and 16 misses. They made 4FT to OKC’s 9 (which included three technical free throws for OKC for what appeared to be fairly minor complaints – nothing like the minute plus game pause for Mark Daignault to simply…complain, without a time out being taken).
Did OKC play great defense, yes, but not that great. Did the Rockets not play great defense, again, yes, but not terrible.
As we’ve seen in other games, the Rockets offense simply came to a dead stop, nothing could restart it, and the game was lost then and there.
Certainly the Rockets players simply have to play better, but there seems to be little in the way of help from the bench. The Rockets offense offers very little else, if the initial high pick and roll is disrupted, and the Thunder disrupted it all night. The team quickly devolves into “Hero Ball” and tends to rush shots, force shots, and take bad shots, as everyone tries to fix it individually, rather than as a team.
Certainly we can see that coach Ime Udoka is trying to get the still very young main players to figure out a way through these problems, because any team with playoff aspirations of any sort will have to do that. It’s early yet, and the decision to do that is easy to understand, and endorse.
What is harder to endorse is the complete lack of alternatives on offense in these disaster quarters when the initial actions fail to yield results. We see static players, that defenders can leave easily to double team and blitz the ballhandler with no consequence, no chance of getting burned for it. We never see different play actions to counter the presses, double team, and blitzes. It’s just more “Try Harder” stuff, from what I can tell.
I am hopeful some sort of useful change will be made, as in the San Antonio game we saw the Rockets switch into a very effective anti-zone defense package of wide open mid-range shots. It give me hope there will be something, anything, that can be used to jump start a stalled offense. The Rockets remain a work in progress.
Again, I’m not too upset, as this was possibly the Thunder’s best shooting game of the season. In their first eight games OKC shot .46% overall and 34% from three. Tonight they shot 51% on all FGA, and 38% from three. Some of that is blunted by garbage time, as well, they shot it even better when the game was in the balance. SGA has shot 46% overall and only 26% from three. Tonight it was 69% overall and 50% on threes. Chet Holmgren also saw a real uptick in percentages (especially in the “FTs without a shot attempt and not in the bonus.” department).
The Rockets also thwarted some of OKC’s strengths. The Thunder average 13.4 steals per game. They only got 9 tonight (the Rockets had 7).
OKC, as their record shows, is a better team than the Rockets. How much better? Let’s see what a game without a DQ or “Disaster Quarter” might bring. The Rockets don’t see OKC again until December 1st. It’s fortunate we aren’t playing them three times in about a week, like the Spurs. Perhaps in a bit less than a month the Rockets will have found a cure for the DQs?
The Rockets play Detroit on Sunday, we’ll see if they can get back to winning right away.