Rockets lost so far
It’s up to the Rockets’ coach to get the most out of the players he has this season.
At nearly a third of the way through the season, the Rockets are lost.
Eric Gordon isn’t having fun. Chris Paul is frustrated. James Harden isn’t close to being as efficient as he was when he was the MVP.
Mike D’Antoni is scratching his head.
The Rockets still feel they are not the team that their record says they are. They might be right. They could be worse.
The Rockets are 11-14 after losing to Dallas on Saturday. Considering their lackluster play in some of the losses they have sustained, it is a wellearned mark.
The Rockets’ team store has a special offer of a 25 percent discount on a new jersey if you bring in an old one. With the way the team has looked, the current Rockets’ jersey isn’t worth it.
After losing just 17 games last season, the Rockets will likely post that many losses by Christmas. If they continue with the effort they put up, or didn’t put up, in Salt Lake City on Thursday, they will have 17 losses by this time next week.
The belief that Daryl Morey will come up with something to change the team’s fortune could be wishful thinking.
It is certainly possible that what the Rockets need cannot be found in their locker room, but it is on D’Antoni to bring out all the good that is there, and he hasn’t managed to do that very often this season.
A complete midseason overhaul is improbable. No doubt Trader Daryl will make a move, perhaps several, but the odds are against the Rockets being gifted an impact player.
That means it is on D’Antoni to figure out what will work and implement it. He has been willing to compromise his preferred style of play to match the talents of his best players, but the Rockets have turned into a slow-moving machine that relies far too much on individual excellence.
They recently had a 12-game stretch where the offense produced at a league-best rate, but even then, it looked like the numbers were lying.
The crushing victories we have become accustomed to since D’Antoni took over haven’t been there. At this point a year ago, the Rockets had eight 20-point victories. They have just three this year. It has been a grind. In pace of play, a measure of offensive possessions per 48 minutes, Houston has dropped from third in 2016-17, to 13th a year ago, to next to last this season.
In D’Antoni’s first two seasons with the Rockets, they never scored less than 100 points in back-to-back games. They had a stretch of four such games in early November, and they scored just 91 points in consecutive losses to Minnesota and Utah last week.
Only two teams among the top 10 in 3-point attempts are shooting worse. Last year, only two of the top 10 in attempts shot better.
Of course, on nights when they can’t make shots, their defense, which hovers between below-average and nonexistent, becomes an even bigger issue.
The toughness and grit they displayed last season in posting the NBA’s best record is long gone. This isn’t a grinding team.
But it isn’t a pretty or flashy one, either. It’s sluggish and sloppy.
Preseason talk of competing with the Warriors now seems laughable.
Harden was on the 2015-16 Rockets team that entered the season with high expectations after a spirited playoff run to the conference finals.
That team was a bickering bunch that never recaptured the magic from the previous season and struggled to a 41-41 finish and a first-round playoff exit.
Before this season, Harden was asked about the difference between this squad and that one, and he said the players on this team liked each other more than that one. He had no doubt this team wouldn’t buckle as that one did.
Camaraderie can take a team only so far.
Know what is better than getting along with teammates? Playing good defense, hustling, making smart basketball plays, hitting open shots.
These are things the Rockets have done very little of this season. Much of that is on the players, of course, but D’Antoni’s job is to find ways to help his players flourish.
While the Rockets don’t have a loaded roster — statistically, they have the NBA’s least-productive bench — they do have an MVP-caliber star, a future Hall of Famer who has plenty of game left and an up-andcoming big man who can be dominant.
Plenty of NBA coaches have done more with less.
While waiting for Morey to orchestrate a deal, D’Antoni needs to do more with what he has.
What’s happened thus far has indeed been a head-scratcher.