GOOD FAITH
Owner, GM still see Stephen Silas as right coach for rebuild.
Stephen Silas made his plans for his first offseason as Rockets coach, an agenda that unlike the season would be much as it is for coaches throughout the NBA. He’d meet with players and staff, take time off to decompress and then study every minute of every game.
Along the way, he said he would evaluate everything, including himself. After 20 years preparing to be a head coach, he had faced challenges he could never have expected, many he can assume and hope he won’t see, at least to the same degree, ever again.
“Learned a lot about myself as far as what I’m good at, what I need to get better at as a coach, learned about the character of our guys and their ability to fight through adversity, learned a lot about being adaptable to a bunch of different changing situations, roster stuff, injuries, all the things we went through this season,” Silas said.
“It remains to be seen how much will be applicable to next season and how much of it is just a function of the craziness of this year and we’re leaving it there, as opposed to the things we’re going to carry along with us that’s good or bad.”
The season brought mostly bad. With the Rockets unable to keep a lineup together or most players on the court, Silas did not get a chance to do much of what made him the choice to succeed Mike D’Antoni or that will be the key to his success when normalcy presumably returns.
Yet, the Rockets saw enough in the trial by fire to be more convinced than ever that he was the right choice last fall and the right coach for the rebuilding to come.
“There’s no doubt in my mind, no doubt,” Rockets owner Tillman Fertitta said. “Teams at the end of the year that are out don’t usually play as hard as this team plays. I saw what I needed to see to feel comfortable about Stephen Silas.”
‘Better than we expected’
The compressed schedule did not allow for practice time and even when there was that chance, the Rockets often did not have enough healthy bodies. They spent the majority of season relying on players that were not in their plans, in lineups with little chance to win. After a season coaching under those circumstances, assessments could be like judging a master chef by his ability to do magic tricks.
The Rockets, however, believe that with a closer look, he revealed a talent for motivating players and an ability to make nonstop adjustments, almost all put in during game-day walk-throughs and video sessions.
“I think Stephen Silas did better than we even all expected,” Fertitta said. “To have to play with 30 different players, no practices, playing every other day or backto-back, and him to be able to every single night put a team out there that was competitive for nearly 48 minutes a game, I was just shocked at how competitive he kept the team. I mean, with guys that never played together, just throw five guys together.
“Look at the team at the end of the year. These are guys people never expected to be in the NBA. They did a tremendous job and a lot of that goes back to the coach.”
When he was hired, the Rockets had a team loaded with veterans James Harden, Russell Westbrook and P.J. Tucker. They and he knew that time was running out on that nucleus, though there was some hope to make it work for a season with Harden. Silas ended up managing a 43-lineup, revolving door roster and will be coaching a team retooled around Kevin Porter Jr., Jae’Sean Tate, KJ Martin, and they hope, a lottery pick teenager.
Rockets general manager Rafael Stone, however, said the qualities they saw then apply now.
“Fundamentally, the most attractive thing about him and the thing we really liked in the interview process was he’s really smart,” Stone said. “One of the things he did a good job selling us on and I bought and I still buy is that intelligence is going to allow him to adapt to changing circumstances, changing rosters, injuries, to the way the league changes.
“I think he had a lot thrown at him this year. He made some smart adjustments. He can help us grow back into a team with a chance to win a championship.”
Though the Rockets never achieved continuity, they did evolve into playing a style offensively after the trade deadline that was effective even with a collection of G League and cast-off fillins. In May’s nine games, the Rockets were second in 3s per game, sixth in assists. Beyond having a brief, small-sample size run of effective offense Stone pointed to the style, with greater ball movement and more cutting.
“We were scoring the ball a lot as a unit with guys that hadn’t played a lot in the NBA,” Stone said. “You wouldn’t necessarily expect the rosters we were putting out there to put up 130 points. We were doing that. That’s a credit to the adjustments he made offensively. We were doing it without point guards, largely, at least at times, which complicates things for a coach.
“Then generally, I thought we played very hard toward the end of the season when a lot of teams don’t. I thought that was indicative of something really important for developing a winning culture and a winning team. I thought he did a very good job getting a team that was out of the race pretty early on to buy in to what he wanted and give really good effort. It didn’t always culminate into success.”
‘Encouraged for the future’
It seemed clear that when the Rockets were caught in the 20game losing streak that began with and was largely fueled by injuries, they made decisions to benefit rebuilding that hurt the team.
That all further tied Silas’ hands. The team he ended up with went 6-27 after the trade deadline, getting ravaged by injuries as much as the team before the deadline.
Stone said that after a season working together, he has a better feel for the types of players that would work with those on hand and with Silas’ style and offense.
Silas’ five-out offense differs in execution, particularly in the sideto-side ball movement that he wanted, even from teams that also seek to keep the lane open by excising post-ups, including the Mike D’Antoni offense that shared priorities but differs in how to achieve them.
“Every offense has to be tailored to your talent but I think we were running the offense he envisions post trade deadline exclusively,” Stone said. “Our personnel matched it a little bit better.
“My vision of basketball and types of players that I think can fit a championship team I think fit very well to that offensive construct. Every offense has to be tailored to your talent but I think we were running the offense he envisions post trade deadline exclusively. Our personnel matched it a little bit better.”
The Rockets’ defense fell apart after Christian Wood’s injury started an avalanche of injuries. They were 11-10 even with the stumbling, distracted start and Harden trade, and were ranked second in the NBA defensively. They ranked last the rest of the season.
“The challenge for us is going to be putting in a defense to match our defense,” Stone said.
Much of that seemed tied to playing rookies and players with almost no NBA experience without practice time to install a defense the rest of the season.
“Almost never were we the more talented team,” Stone said. “But as our young guys get better and learn the game, as we become functionally more talented as we draft people and trade for people and frankly as we get guys off the injured list, some of those close losses should turn to victories, so long as we play hard and run these schemes. We were just decimated by injuries in that period of time.”
Developing young talent shifted to the priority and will be even more crucial to climb from the depths of 17-55. As much as Silas earned praise from 30-somethings Kelly Olynyk, D.J. Augustin and John Wall, long-term success could be determined by the progress made by last season’s rookies and the three that will come in this season’s first round. The Rockets finished last season with eight players that had been undrafted and just one that they picked up on draft night, the 20-year-old Martin who was the 52nd selection last season.
“That’s one of the encouraging things to me that pretty much every single guy who played for us this season got better and played well individually,” Silas said. “So, I’m very encouraged about the future.”