The great Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and the even greater Oklahoma City Thunder are 21-1 — and they don’t look like a team ready to lose much in the near future.
But below them, the Houston Rockets, Denver Nuggets and Los Angeles Lakers refuse to go away, continuing to pile up wins in a tough Western Conference. Still, questions about each of these contenders remain. So what’s keeping this second tier of title challengers from usurping the Thunder, who lie so elegantly upon their throne? Let’s examine one area of concern for each.
Rockets stuck in the clutch
By most metrics, the Rockets are every bit of a contender. Entering Thursday, they’re owners of the No. 2 offense and No. 3 defense, and are second in point differential. They’re the NBA’s most efficient offensive rebounding team in a league predicated on winning the possession battle. And they’ve turned one of their biggest weaknesses — half-court offense — into a strength, ranking just outside the top 10 in points per 100 plays and second in 3-point percentage.
Isn’t there supposed to be a problem listed here at some point?
The Rockets’ issues haven’t been exacerbated in games in which they’ve dominated their opponent (which to be fair, has been most of them in a relatively tough schedule). Their problems come in close games. According to NBA.com tracking data, all five of the Rockets’ losses this season occurred during “crunch time,” when the game is within five points in the final five minutes of regulation or overtime.
The legitimacy of the clutch phenomenon has long been debated, but most players and coaches will tell you that the game slows down. For the Rockets, however, it speeds up. Houston is the fourth-slowest team on the season, fueled by the patient probing of Kevin Durant and Alperen Şengün and how head coach Ime Udoka staggers his best players. In crunch time, however, their pace jumps 10 spots. As a result, their 123.7 offensive rating plummets to just 114.4, equivalent to the 8-13 Portland Trail Blazers (21st in offensive rating).
“It’s been OK,” Udoka said of Houston’s crunch-time execution. “We let a few games early in the season slip away, those stand out. Fouls, missed free throws, giving up offensive rebounds and turning the ball over bit us in those [games]. We’d like to be better in those endgame situations.”
Last season’s Rockets played in 44 clutch games, winning 26 of them — not an elite rate, but it’s clear that a young team benefited greatly from Fred VanVleet’s steady hand, decision-making and overall poise in the closing moments. Some of that responsibility has shifted naturally to Amen Thompson and Reed Sheppard, who need to be put in these high-pressure situations on a routine basis.
[Get more Rockets news: Houston team feed]
Fortunately, there’s a tangible solution. Remember that guy Houston traded for this summer? You know, the future Hall of Famer who’s eighth on the all-time scoring list, a two-time champion and one of the game’s greatest closers? As in, the guy who was brought in for that very reason, finishing games? Let’s try that.
Durant is just fourth on the team in clutch-time usage rate, despite a walloping 67.6 true shooting percentage. Şengün and Thompson are first and second in usage, which is understandable given their talent, but neither is the three-level threat Durant is, nor does either possess the experience a two-decade career allows. Give it to 35. I mean, 7.
Denver’s decimated defense
If surrendering 131 points over the weekend to one of the worst-ranked offenses in the past decade (Dallas!) wasn’t enough of a red flag, the Nuggets have a consistency (and injury) problem.
Let’s get the obvious out of the way: Aaron Gordon and Christian Braun, both of whom will miss the next few weeks with hamstring and ankle injuries, respectively, are sorely missed. You could make the argument they are the Nuggets’ best defenders, combining physicality, versatility and IQ. It’s no surprise Denver’s defense with both in the lineup has held opponents to just 107.2 points per 100 possessions. For context, the Pistons allow 110.2 points per 100 possessions, which ranks right behind the Oklahoma City Thunder.
Their absence, which is clearly felt despite the otherworldly production of Nikola Jokić, becomes a multi-faceted issue. For one, a major rotational shift occurs once two of your most consistent performers are missing in action (Denver’s most-used five-man unit still ranks fourth in the NBA in total minutes played, despite not having both players for nearly two weeks.) This results in elevated roles for players like Spencer Jones and Peyton Watson, who, um, aren’t exactly like-for-like replacements. According to Cleaning the Glass, Jones and Watson are in the 12th and 9th percentile in defensive efficiency. No, they’re not good defenders.
This becomes an even bigger problem contextualized within the overall Nuggets defensive scheme. Denver is one of the league’s most help-friendly teams, whether by stunting, trapping or walling up in the paint. It’s also one of the bigger utilizers of zone defense, a top-half team, according to Synergy tracking data.
Such an approach is viable when players like Gordon and Braun are hunting opponents down for 48 minutes. When the focus shifts to newcomers like Cameron Johnson and Bruce Brown, two veterans who made a name for themselves defensively but have regressed in the last few years, complications arise. Since both Gordon and Braun last played, the Nuggets are first in offensive rating (hello, Jokić) and 30th in defensive rating. As in, dead last.
[Get more Nuggets news: Denver team feed]
A few weeks ago, Nuggets head coach David Adelman hinted at tweaks to account for their injuries, one of which involves more reliance on reserve center Jonas Valančiūnas.
“Other guys will fill in, do their thing and we’ll look a little bit different,” Adelman said in late November. “We’ll play a different way, but we’ll still have our constants.”
Denver likes to start second quarters with Valančiūnas flanked by a combination of Johnson, Brown, Zeke Nnaji and Tim Hardaway Jr. Their three most-used lineups featuring Valančiūnas at center are giving up 126.7, 122.9 and 120.0 points per 100 possessions. That’s just not sustainable, no matter how many flamethrowers Jamal Murray throws into the stratosphere.
Lakers’ lack of shooting
Losing to the Phoenix Suns in a game where Devin Booker played 10 minutes is … bad. But that’s not the strangest thing about the 15-5 second-place Lakers.
Through the first 20 games of the season, Los Angeles ranks in the bottom third in 3-point rate and conversion rate, per Cleaning the Glass, despite possessing the NBA’s No. 1 rim and midrange field-goal percentage. The Suns made 17 of their 39 attempts from downtown compared to the Lakers’ 13, which doesn’t seem like much of a difference in a vacuum, but extrapolated to an entire season, it becomes a domino analytics effect.
And it’s not so much the disparity between the three levels of offense that’s alarming. It’s the Lakers’ seeming unwillingness to let it fly, which has historical implications that contenders should be concerned about. As of today, the Lakers are 24th in both 3-point attempts and makes, and 18th in 3-point percentage.
A brief recent championship history lesson, if you will:
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2025 Thunder: 10th in 3-point attempts
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2023 Nuggets: 25th (4th in 3P%)
I could go on, but the math is simple. The champions have typically been proficient 3-point chuckers. If you buck the trend, like the Nuggets did in ’23, you better believe they’re converting the ones they do take at a high clip.
[Get more Lakers news: Los Angeles team feed]
A big part of Lakers head coach JJ Redick’s on-court calculus is establishing a hierarchy behind Luka Dončić. From the looks of it, it seems to have sorted itself out, with Austin Reaves serving as Dončić’s second fiddle and LeBron James occupying the third role — which one could argue is an optimal spot for the greatest player of this generation.
But Redick’s job entails much more than just that. Finding a happy medium between creation for his superstars and getting role players in a rhythm is just as important. Starting forward Rui Hachimura finished the month of November shooting an eye-popping 48.1% from deep on around five attempts per game. If Hachimura — who’s shooting 46.1% on the year — is the Lakers’ best shooter, there shouldn’t be a seven-attempt margin between him and Dončić, who is converting slightly less than 35 percent of his treys.
Between Hachimura, Dalton Knecht, Gabe Vincent and Jake LaRavia, Los Angeles certainly has the floor spacers on the roster to let it fly. Getting back an aggressive point-of-attack defender in Marcus Smart, who is also known to launch, helps too.
The Lakers are also well-positioned to enter the trade market for shooting upgrades in less than two weeks, and a name like CJ McCollum could make sense as a potential target.
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