Silas keeps healthy outlook
Coach says team will be ‘just fine’ once it’s whole
The worst, Stephen Silas decided, is at last behind the Rockets. Given how things have gone, odds are he’s right.
That might be a coach’s way to make it so, with the hope that positive thinking and messaging will help fuel a turnaround, or at least something better for a team that limped to the AllStar break with 13 consecutive losses and just eight healthy and available players.
But Silas points to reasons for his optimism. His irreplaceable center will return. His vital starting guards have gotten stronger. Players who ended the first half of the season on the shelf with day-to-day injuries will have enough time before the second half begins to put those injuries behind them.
Even having enough Rockets around during games to constitute a crowd would be an improvement. Silas expects more.
“It’s encouraging to know when we get back and we’re healthy and we’re whole and we’re in a position we have enough guys to compete, we’re going to be just fine,” Silas said. “We’re going to be just fine.”
But the damage will be difficult to repair. The Rockets reached the break second-to-last in the Western Conference, 6½ games out of 10th place, the final playin spot. Three teams and the NBA’s toughest secondhalf schedule stand in their way.
The immediate goals,
however, are to end the losing streak, play better and see where that gets them.
“When we’re all healthy, we know what type of team we can be,” guard John Wall said. “When we’re a healthy team, we have a lot of weapons. That’s why, hopefully … we can get a lot of those guys back and try to get off to a good start and try to (climb) out of a 13-game losing streak.
“You hear the outside noise. You hear all of that. But we’ve been cool … just trying to stay together, figuring out ways to win, what can we do better. The most important thing to do in the break is look in the mirror and feel like we can play better.”
It will take more than Christian Wood’s return, the hope that Wall and Victor Oladipo can continue to play on consecutive nights, and Eric Gordon and Danuel House Jr. coming back from knee injuries and regaining their 3-point touch. With that in mind, Silas said he won’t spend his break on a golf course.
“It’ll be very much in the front of my mind,” Silas said of the losing streak and struggles along the way. “I don’t, I don’t, I don’t stop trying to figure it out, don’t stop thinking about ways I can be better, don’t stop thinking about ways I can help, don’t stop thinking about different coverages, different offensive sets that we can run, different ways that I can help.
“This All-Star break, I’m not putting the losing streak in the back of my mind. It’s going to be at the front, because that’s just me. That’s who I am. I’m a problem solver at heart, and we have a problem. Obviously, health and all those things will help. I will spend this time (and) really, really dive into a bunch of film.”
As much as the Rockets’ hopes are tied to Wood’s return, a lot to expect after his missing a month, there is also a sense he can partner with Oladipo and Wall in ways they have only begun to see.
The Rockets’ version of a big three has played together in just three games, sharing the court for only 53 minutes.
“I think just playing together more often and playing more minutes — the last couple games (Oladipo and I) played 38 and 40 minutes together, so that is more repetition, more time together,” Wall said. “That’s just helping us feed off each other and understand how we can help each other be better.”
Wood’s injury has spanned the entirety of the Rockets’ losing streak. Oladipo missed six of those games. Wall missed a pair.
But both have seemed to grow stronger even as the losses piled up. Both had season highs Wednesday, Wall scoring 36 points, Oladipo 30.
Wall has scored at least 20 points in four of his past five games, including consecutive 30-point games for the first time since January 2018. Oladipo has had at least 20 points in each of his past three games.
“We’ll see what this team is really made of when we’re all healthy,” Oladipo said. “We kind of dug ourselves in a hole, but we all have something to prove.
“We all have chips on our shoulder. When we’re fully healthy, it’s going to be interesting.
“It’s going to be interesting to see what kind of damage we can do. Next week when we get here, let it all hang out, because we’re going to need to.”
The Rockets will need that kind of determination nearly as much as good health or better shooting. Even if everything comes together, it might be too late. But with the exception of the collapse against the Grizzlies, the Rockets have shown the grit that will be their only way out of their deep hole.
“Once we get healthy,” Silas said, “we’re going to be good. I really believe that.”