Why is there a picture of James Harden? Read on.
Welcome to Part Two of three covering what I believe is a high stakes season (in terms of sports for entertainment) for the Houston Rockets. One of the reasons to divide the team into the three parts, management, players and coaching, is to look at the relative strengths, weaknesses, and pressures on each. Another is ask the question: can a team be successful without all three elements being strong on their own, and also working at least fairly well? If by success you mean, finish with a decent record, make the playoffs, the yes, that’s very possible. We’ve seen it with these Rockets, and not that long ago we saw LeBron James drag not particularly impressive Cleveland teams to the NBA Finals (albeit in a pretty weak Eastern Conference).
If by success you mean make conference Finals, maybe an NBA Finals, then no, I don’t believe a team can do that, absent a truly generational player like James at his peak. If a team lacks that, and I’d argue, for example, the Knicks who almost swept three rounds of NBA playoffs do lack such a player, then the other elements of coaching and players must be good as well. I think higher level success in the playoffs is won at the margins. Those margins, those fine distinctions are where an inadequate coach, an incoherent roster, or players who are unsuited to their roles, will limit success.
Or sometimes the distinctions and margins are not really a razor’s edge at all. Sometimes they’re a dull axe blade.
The question is this: are the Rockets players suited to run the offense and defense they’re being asked to run? If the players job on the court is to run their coach’s scheme, and in essence it is, rather than it solely being a series of discrete actions that can then be quantified and ranked, are the Rockets players fit for this job?
Well, yes and no. That sounds weasely but it isn’t. Yes on defense, no on offense.
This isn’t the usual question of, (perceived as a bag of stats and measures), is an individual player any good? That’s a good question to ask, of course, but it’s also now the easier one to ask, as we now have a welter of public information, and of course even more is available to teams and other professionals. It can be a way of answering the same question, of course, as well.
What it can’t answer as well is: Is this player any good at what he’s being asked to do, and might he be better asked to do something else, or do things differently?
The Rockets defense is very good. We might perceive it as having slipped from when it was fun, but it’s still good for 6th in the NBA. That’s in a title winning range (title winning teams are almost always top 10 in both offense and defense, and usually around top five in one of those if not both). It’s not a particularly creative scheme of defense, and it doesn’t seem to have a number of go to moves, when it appears an opponent has solved it over the course of playoff games. The go to move is “try harder and maybe let’s try a zone”. This has worked, but in my opinion is exhausting, and costs the team in various ways. Reflexively adding more defense when points are what’s needed is an odd way of looking the world, but the Rockets defense isn’t in need of fixing, particularly.
The Rockets, though, are suited to playing good to great defense in the style they are being asked to play. If Kevin Durant weren’t the defensive equivalent of a coat rack on the court, except when he sniffs a badass block in the air, the rest of it would look better. I think a lot of “glaring mistakes” by other players are a result of him not really guarding anyone on certain possessions, or even attempting to fight through screens.
There’s more to say about other players and issues they have: Sengun isn’t really a rim protector, Sheppard is targeted on defense, Tari Eason makes bizarre choices. That said, those are the kind of things other teams are routinely able to live with. Especially with defenders like Amen Thompson, and let’s be fair, Jabari Smith, on the court. (I think Jabari and Amen were asked to play outfield for Durant a lot.)
So I’d say this group of players is fit to run the defensive scheme they are asked to run. We’ll leave the question of “Is what they’re being asked to do good enough?” for tomorrow.
Now for the “no”. Are the Rockets players suited to run the offense they run? No. Absolutely not. Why?
This one’s easy, because essentially the Rockets under Udoka run a less complex version of the offense the Rockets ran at the peak of James Harden’s and Mike D’Antoni’s tenure. That specific offense typically starts at the top of the three point arc, with an initiator who is capable of breaking down a defender off the dribble and either passing him by or getting him on his hip for a driving finish and maybe a foul. If that doesn’t work, the center (usually) sets a screen that gives him the space to get to the rim, and the screener also rolls to the rim sometimes for easy dunk finishes. Young Clint Capela was a star in this role. If the rim is closed off, and the center covered, the initiator can pass out to the perimeter where shooters are waiting in the left corner, and at other points on the arc. Or it the attack can be reset elsewhere on the court.
In the case of Harden and MDA, the Rockets took a player who wasn’t especially highly valued early in his career, and gave him a crucial role, in PJ Tucker. Tucker was a rugged defender who could defend above his size, and could make corner threes. The other players can also shoot 3pt shots, and hopefully one of them can also initiate (Chris Paul) or get his own shot (Eric Gordon).
That’s how that offensive approach worked (circa 2017) when it was going well. That is, without much exception, what the Rockets attempted to do in 2025-26.
Do any of the current Rockets resemble any of the key parts here much? Are the players fitted for the roles they need to play in this scheme?
No. They aren’t.
First, there’s no James Harden, an offensive player so dangerous in his prime that one team literally doubled him with a player always following behind him, so he couldn’t shoot his step back three point shot. (Hello, Ricky Rubio pic!) Is there anyone even resembling that player on the Rockets roster? Again. No. It certainly wasn’t Kevin Durant. There is no one player who can individually break down the defense and get a good shot from a contested position at the start of the possession. Not one in any quantity anyway, and the Rockets offense generates that problem, and question, nearly every single offensive play, for these Rockets. Without James Harden, or anyone close.
Well, what about other spots? Is there a center that operates off that player the Rockets don’t have? One that gets easy looks off the threat of the initiator and his movement? No. There’s a mobile center, without a lot of vertical ability, who is really better set in space closer to the basket, and allowed to pass to moving teammates, where he can be special, and create and operate fluidly.
Does such a center as the Rockets actually have clash with the Hardenesque Scheme? Yes. Violently. It doesn’t mesh. They’re in the same space by the basket, and surprise, since that almost always happens, you know who else is in that space? You know who else values that same real estate close to the basket? Kevin Durant. So given the scheme, the center, and KD, who else might want to occupy this same court space? That’s right, the defense. NBA defenses can get away with playing a college scheme to beat the Rockets when it really counts. All they really have to do is close the paint, and nothing really works, barring a hot shooting night.
Now, are there fairly reliable shooters in the corner, waiting for a pass? Sometimes there’s Jabari Smith (36%) or Reed Sheppard (39%), but oftentimes there’s Amen Thompson (21%). (PJ Tucker took 74% of his 3pt shots from the corner, where he shot 38% for his career, peaking at 45%.) In this Rockets offense Amen (23%) is in the corner more than Reed (49%). Amen shoots the easiest three pointer in the game at 23% from the corner, where he takes 58% of his threes. Worse, though, because Amen knows he’s such a bad shooter, he often passes up the open shot the offense laboriously generated, often leading to a grenade to someone else. Sheppard shot 49% from the corner, where he shot 14% of his threes, Smith went 37% from the corner and shot 35% of his threes from there. No, I can’t make it make sense.
Once again, players that aren’t suited for a role are put in that role anyway, to fit a certain scheme.
In fact almost the entire Rockets roster, including “fits anywhere” Kevin Durant don’t, haven’t, and won’t, fit this approach. Historically (yes, we can refer to Durant’s career ‘historically’ at this point) Kevin Durant has always been best off ball, and not dribbling unless he’s trying to get to his middie. Which is EXACTLY why you cast him the the James Harden Role. A role that requires, demands, insists upon, an immaculate handle, and coolness under pressure when passing, and an ability to get anywhere on the court to force the defense into problematic positions. If you thought you saw that from Durant last season, welcome KD Burner Account! If you think Fred VanVleet is some sort of James Harden analog at 32, well, it’s nice that you read the Dreamshake, Mrs VanVleet. At least he can dribble, if not get a shot at the rim.
I could go on, and have, but I think that’s enough for now.
So, by my reckoning the players are fine, and even very good at the defense they’re being asked to play, and they’re almost entirely unsuited to the offense they’re asked to play. And yet they still can score. That, to me, is actually a fantastic sign for the future of these players (wherever they end up). Imagine what they could do if they did what they were good at, instead of doing some weird cosplay of the the 2017 Rockets offense?
Next up, ahem, coaching.
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