The Houston Rockets made it clear at this year's trade deadline that its championship or bust for them this year. If Houston doesn't make the NBA Finals, or at least the Western Conference Finals, there is destined to be some turnover after the season concludes. Head coach, Mike D'Antoni, isn't under contract after this season and according to numerous reports the GM, Darryl Morey, has been on thin ice for a while now. Ever since the injury and subsequent trade of Clint Capela, the Rockets have fully embraced the center-less, position-less basketball style, which has been slowly getting more and more popular in the NBA. Although a lot of other teams have started to experiment with the center position, the Rockets are the first team since 1963 to play an entire game without a player taller than 6-foot-6. They are pushing the boundaries and seeing how long this style of basketball will work. We've only seen this in action for a month now (12 games) but so far it has been a huge success.
Houston has played a total of 12 games so far with this new "small ball" style but in the small sample size, they have been playing extremely well and are climbing up the Western Conference standings. During this stretch, James Harden and Russell Westbrook have been even better than they were before as they have each averaged over 30 points per game. Harden is already averaging 34 ppg because of his strong start to the season, but during this stretch, his shooting percentage has been better from both inside and outside of the arc. Russell Westbrook has been the player who seems to have benefited most from this new style as he has been putting up numbers similar to his MVP season a few years ago. Over the past 12 games, Westbrook has attempted more shots per game than he has in any season over his career and he's hitting 54% of those shots. Although he will probably not continue to shoot at that high of a clip, there have been some signs of improvement. The three-point shot is such a huge part in today's game that a lot of players force it and then there's Ben Simmons. The three-point shot might be the biggest knock on Westbrook's game, as he usually shoots four or five a game and he's lucky if he makes one, but over the last month Westbrook has attempted just over two per game and it's done wonders for his game. Keeping the bigs out of the lane allows for Harden and Westbrook to do what they do best; drive the lane.
Harden and Westbrook are both huge pieces of this team, but in the Western Conference, you won't be making it to any finals if you don't have more than two good players. After the Capela trade, the Rockets were able to sign Robert Covington in the buyout market which was huge for this team. It gave this team another capable defender and someone who spreads the floor even more on the offensive end. The Rockets still play with the same tempo and pace as they did previously but they have bought into this brand of basketball even more. They went from 44 rebounds per game, which ranked them in the middle of the league, to now just 40 rebounds per game over the last 12, which would rank them dead last. With a smaller lineup, you would expect them to be outrebounded but to make up for that deficiency the Rockets are shooting 48 three's per game which is ten more than 90 percent of the league. Rockets not named James Harden or Russell Westbrook have combined to take 34 shots per game from behind the arc compared to under 11 shots per game inside the arc which is fascinating to me. Houston loves to iso Harden and Westbrook and keep shooters on the arc to allow them the opportunity to shoot the three, drive and dish, or drive and score themselves every trip down the court.
It's only been a month, so it may be premature to judge how this experiment will pan out at the end of the season, but so far it has looked fantastic. They have gone 10-2 in the 12 games and they are 6-1 against playoff teams in that stretch. Other positive news is that the Western Conference doesn't have the dominant bigs that it had a few years ago with the exception being Nikola Jokic who Houston is probably hoping to avoid. With all that being said I am a little skeptical of how this will work in a seven-game series in the playoffs. We've seen Westbrook get frustrated, we've seen Houston miss 27 straight three's, and we've seen each of these guys get sent home earlier than expected in the playoffs on multiple occasions. I love watching these guys compete and this new style is extremely fun to watch but I'm not convinced that this is a team built to beat the Lakers or Clippers. In a seven-game series, there is plenty of time to make adjustments and I believe both LA teams have the basketball knowledge to find a way to stop "operation: small ball".