Green hopes to return for postseason
Rockets guard Gerald Green, who has been out since suffering a left foot fracture during the preseason, said Friday he hopes he can return in time for the playoffs but will be careful not to rush his rehab.
Green, still wearing a walking boot and not cleared to run, said he has been walking on an underwater treadmill and is receiving therapy regularly, allowing him to regain some of the strength and definition in his legs.
“I’m not trying to speed myself up but hoping I’ll be ready to go by the end of this year, maybe toward (the) playoffs,” Green said. “Don’t want to put myself ahead of schedule. Don’t want to get anybody’s hopes up or anything like that. It’s something I have a personal goal. If I reach it, great. If I don’t, it’s not the end of the world. Just keep getting healthy.”
Green said he needed to take time away from the team but was happy to be back.
“Just taking time to get my foot right,” he said. “Every time I come in here, smiles, everybody here rocking with me heavy.”
Green, who has averaged 10.2 points on 36 percent 3-point shooting in three seasons with the Rockets, said he was going to “make a full recovery.”
Different styles get similar result
No team posts up more often than the 76ers, who faced the Rockets on Friday at Toyota Center. Only three teams post up less often than the Rockets. Yet the 76ers and Rockets entered the game scoring roughly the same number of points in the paint and within 10 feet of the rim.
“That’s one of the three that we want,” Rockets coach Mike D’Antoni said of layups, free throws and 3-pointers. “It’s the best shot you can have if you can (get) uncontested layups. We’ll take all we can get. We just have to keep working on our efficiency and make sure our effective field-goal percentage is up over 50 (percent). We’re pretty good. We can be better.”
The Rockets’ overall effective field-goal percentage is 54.2 percent, fifth in the league but just a tenth of a percentage point out of second. The Rockets are 16th in points scored in the paint, less than one point per game behind the Sixers, who average 11.9 on post-ups. The Rockets average one point per game posting up.
Harden ‘may be greatest scorer’
For all the times Rockets coach Mike D’Antoni or general manager Daryl Morey drew attention for favorably comparing James Harden’s scoring to the all-time greats, they had company Friday.
“If you look at James Harden in an isolation environment, he may be the greatest scorer in the history of our game. I mean that,” Sixers coach Brett Brown said. “If you just go on math and metrics, it’s just ... him and a defender. It’s ridiculous what he does.”
Harden, who is averaging a league-high 38.2 points per game, averages 17.2 in isolation sets. He is making 40.2 percent of his step-back 3-pointers, taking 7.9 per game. The next-most in the NBA is Luka Doncic’s 4.2 stepback 3 atempts per game.
“When you look at him, by himself, out top, and you just look at the metrics we all have available to us around the league now, it is of historic proportions,” Brown said. “If that’s all they ran, they would beat you based on the math of what gets wins.”