Coach: Defense to get even better
LAKE CHARLES, La. — Mike D’Antoni knows what has been said. He had heard the doubts about the Rockets that have swirled since Trevor Ariza and Luc Mbah a Moute bolted as free agents and Jeff Bzdelik, the associate coach who ran his defense, soon followed. He knows his players know it, too.
D’Antoni has his own opinion and his own expectation.
The Rockets had defeated assumptions before, having refuted the argument that D’Antoni’s teams won’t defend. The Rockets excelled defensively a season ago, but that was then. The challenge had become greater, inspiring new questions.
“(The media) reports we’re going to be worse defensively,” D’Antoni said. “Obviously, (the players) read and they put a lot of emphasis into it. And we’re not going to be worse. We’re going to be better.”
That will take some doing. Ariza and Mbah a Moute not only excelled defensively, they were wellsuited to the switching style Bzdelik installed.
The Rockets, however, insist they have replaced their small forwards with the sort of athletes who will fit well and assistant coach Roy Rogers pledges to pick up where Bzdelik left off.
“The challenge I’m trying to present to our guys is everyone knows we are a very capable offensive team,” Rogers said. “But I think last year, we surprised people with how well we were able to defend. Now, we have a choice. We can take a step forward defensively or we can take a step backwards. And I think our guys are professional enough that they’ve enjoyed success. They had a great amount of success last season, they don’t want to take a step back.”
Getting the word out early
The Rockets had the sixth-rated defense in the NBA last season. But after the Feb. 6 lineup change to move P.J. Tucker into the starting lineup, replacing Ryan Anderson, the Rockets were ranked third.
Much has been made of Carmelo Anthony’s defensive issues in switches with the Oklahoma City Thunder last season, particularly in the postseason. He could be replacing Anderson, who was even more limited in that scheme, as a power forward. James Ennis III might likely be asked to defend at small forward. D’Antoni said though some of the names have changed, the schemes will not.
“Obviously, losing the pieces we lost last year — a bunch of really good guys — I think James Ennis, Michael Carter-Williams, all these different guys will fit in because the way that we operate with our team, with what we built, is all about culture,” guard Chris Paul said. “If you think you’re going to come in to our team and not play defense, you have another thing coming.
“It’s funny. From day one last year, our defense is what we focused on. Everybody just wanted to just talk about us playing fast and shooting 3s, but defense was our focus last year from day one. That’s why we were as good as we were last year.”
That emphasis was clear on the first day of training camp Tuesday when D’Antoni said even the morning video session took unusually long to go over the “blueprint.” Though the Rockets’ offense always will command the spotlight on game nights, the defense — and particularly the communication it takes to correctly switch and rotate — will demand attention in practice.
“It’s definitely been a big focus today in conversation and in the drills we’ve done,” Anthony said. “You can tell, our main focus is of being a top defensive team. Offensively, everybody knows what this team can do, this team is capable of. But defensively, we want to establish that early, from day one. I thought we did a great job of kind of just communicating, putting that in play, just that mindset and effort it takes to do that.”
D’Antoni said that eventually, practice time will be evenly split between offense and defense. Efforts will be made to improve offensively, too. But the Rockets had the NBA’s top offense last season until cruising through the final two weeks after clinching homecourt advantage, with Golden State surpassing them on the final day.
Working way up from No. 6
The defense got off to a slow start before it improved throughout the season, progress that was not solely a credit to the lineup change.
“I think a huge part of that is the first half of the season we were trying to figure out what defense we wanted to be great at,” guard James Harden said. “Toward the end of the season, from halfway, we finished third in defense. We’re more than capable of it. We know what we want to do. We’re going to have to go out there and do it harder, communicate more.
“It’s throughout the course of our entire season. We watched film. Communication got a lot better. We know where our switches are going to come from, when we switch off, things like that. It’s going to be good.”
D’Antoni expects better than good. He expects better than it was when it was among the NBA’s best.
“We know what’s going to win us games,” D’Antoni said. “We’re the No. 1 or 2 offensive team in the league and we’re sixth in defense. What’s the easiest thing to improve?
“We got to get up to one or two defensively.”