Abdelfattah primed for job beside Silas
LAS VEGAS — As a college basketball player, Mahmoud Abdelfattah took mid-range jumpers. As a college coach, he had players posting up inside.
Then he became an employee of the Rockets, first as a Rio Grande Valley Vipers intern, then as a Vipers assistant coach and then as Vipers head coach.
He learned. No G League team ever took fewer mid-range shots. Perhaps no team in the G League ever surpassed the Vipers that Abdelfattah took to last season's championship without the benefit of rookie draft picks working in the NBA's development league.
Abdelfattah has since become a Rockets assistant coach, largely charged with helping Stephen Silas guide the team's offense. He should fit in well with the philosophy he had been taught and embraced since he first learned his way around the Rio Grande Valley.
“Offensively, I'm a big believer of shot selection, taking efficient shots,” Abdelfattah said. “It goes back to taking mid-range shots or not taking them, goes back to getting to the rim, getting to the freethrow line. You know, there's a right time to take mid-range shots. In the GLeague, we took the least mid-range shots in league history, .9 a game.”
The right time is when coaching NBA superstars with the sort of talent to turn mid-range shots into efficient options. In the G League, he wanted his players to avoid those shots to help them get their chance at the next level. With the Rockets, he likely will endorse some midrange shots while preferring others.
“At the NBA level, I think you can focus more on what guys can take those mid-range jump shots because these guys have the talent to do so,” Abdelfattah said. “But also, I think you can kind of improve guys' games by
helping them realize with some of the shots that they take, they can improve other aspects of the game by either being a playmaker or being a cutter, getting to the free-throw line more, instead of settling for the mid-range jump shot.”
The other part of his philosophy is to give players offensive freedom. As with Silas and summer league coach Rick Higgins, Abdelfattah prefers to have his players get in the open court, play with pace and not slow down to get a play call from the coach.
“The biggest thing for me, I want the guys to explore,” he said. “I just want them to be able to use their talent. Us as coaches, you know we like to explore as well. We like to try new schemes and concepts, new ideas. I like to let the guys play with a lot of freedom and maybe take a couple of what some would call questionable shots or moves.
“Or defensively, if somebody makes a read in anticipation, letting guys be who they are and play with a lot of freedom, that is by far I think my best attribute. I just like to let the guys play.”
That should help him fit in, as with his taste for 3s and the spacing that comes with them, and a priority on the most efficient shots. The entire league has moved in that direction, but for Abdelfattah, that started when he joined the Vipers and the Rockets organization in 2018.
“Coming to Houston helped me develop that,” Abdelfattah said of his offensive philosophy. “Coming from college only, I'd post-up. As a player, I was just a mid-range. That was my thing. But I learned a lot from Daryl Morey, analytics, Travis Stockbridge (the Vipers general manager.) At RGV we had hours and hours of writing the formulas on the wall to help me learn.”
He learned and won, and along the way, became a believer in the style that has gone from an organizational philosophy to an NBA staple.