Future is looking up, but not in good way
With Capela out, coach countering size disadvantages by going small
Late in Wednesday’s overtime loss to the Brooklyn Nets, when center Nene had the reaction many have had when watching the Rockets and their makeshift lineups since the injury to center Clint Capela.
Rockets coach Mike D’Antoni told Nene, “Go get Nunnally.”
Nene responded, “Who?”
D’Antoni has to identify players differently now that he has three who answer to James. In the heat of the moment, Nene came up with “the new guy.”
But even if James Nunnally, who was signed just hours before playing 24½ minutes in Wednesday’s game, found time to introduce himself, the Rockets are using lineups that could have observers asking “What?”
The latest meeting of the Rockets and Los Angeles Lakers will not bring LeBron James to Toyota Center on Saturday night. It will not offer the rematch of Chris Paul and Rajon Rondo. The storylines have been rewritten by injuries, instead dominated by James Harden’s dominance while averaging 41.2 points over his past 20 games.
Yet, the absence of Capela, who on Thursday underwent a surgery that’s expected to keep him out for four to six weeks, could be most conspicuous with the
Lakers rotating three 7-1 centers in a game after the Rockets’ started a lineup with the 6-6 P.J. Tucker at center.
The Rockets could start the 6-11 Nene, as they did in the first game without Capela when coach Mike D’Antoni wanted his veteran center matched up with Memphis’ Marc Gasol on Monday. But whether Nene starts or comes off the bench, the Rockets will match up with the Lakers’ centers with players who can look them straight in the chest.
“Can they play them all at the same time?” D’Antoni said. “Twenty-one feet, right?
“We have to play our game. They have their strengths, obviously protecting the rim and rebounding and all that. We’ll have to spread them out and make it a weakness if we can and try to assert our will on them. If they assert their will, they win. That’s kind of the nature of the game.”
Lakers centers Tyson Chandler and JaVale McGee would rank sixth and ninth in field-goal percentage in the NBA if Chandler, who ranks third in NBA history, had played enough to qualify. Center Ivica Zubac is coming off his career-high scoring game, making 12 of 14 shots for 26 points Thursday in Oklahoma City against the Thunder combination of Steven Adams and Nerlens Noel. The Rockets’ Marquese Chriss has played in the past three games, but he did not return to the overtime game on Wednesday after his six-minute stint in the first half. Isaiah Hartenstein, who played briefly Monday, did not play at all. The Rockets do not intend to increase Nene’s playing time beyond the 15 minutes he has averaged since Capela’s injury.
“We don’t want to do that,” D’Antoni said. “Then we’d lose him for a month. That’s not good. We’ll see how we have to go. Nene will play. We’ll just have to pick the time. We will be small some.”
That will leave the Rockets deciding only which 7-footer Nene faces. Against the Nets, they chose to have him come off the bench to try to keep Ed Davis off the boards, a move that worked well. But the move left them without Nene to match up with Jarrett Allen, who had 20 points and a career-high 24 rebounds.
Allen’s initial burst, scoring eight points with five rebounds in the first 10 minutes as the Nets rushed to a 10-point lead, came against that small lineup. But D’Antoni said that was not indicative of a mismatch inside as much as missteps that had to be corrected.
“There were breakdowns,” D’Antoni said. “We had to talk about it. We didn’t communicate and we didn’t switch properly. We look at it and almost all the time we had a guy that just walked into our locker room (in Nunnally). We had a rookie (Gary Clark) that is still learning his way on the floor. We had Austin (Rivers) who hasn’t really had a full practice with us. There are going to be mistakes. And then we had Eric (Gordon) coming back after two weeks not playing.”
As D’Antoni described the way the Nets attacked the Rockets, running pick-and-roll with a rimrunning center and spreading the floor with scorers off the dribble, he could have been talking about the Lakers.
“They’re going to do everything ramped up,” he said. “Hopefully, we’re ready for it.”
The Rockets, however, will face many teams with full-sized centers while Capela is out, including Joel Embiid and the 76ers on Monday in Philadelphia.
The Rockets generally will not attempt to match size with size, instead hoping to go small to measure up with shooting and spacing. That might not be featured on the television commercials, but it will go a long way toward finding a winner.
“It’s a new basketball right now,” Nene said. “There’s a lot of shots outside. It’s much more fast. You just have to adapt.”
jonathan.feigen@chron.com twitter.com/jonathan_feigen