HOUSTON — For the doubters, the story behind the Rockets’ unbeaten start is about who Houston hasn’t beaten, rather than the teams they have.
There is some logic to that, of course. The Rockets are 6-0, but the Lakers, Jazz, Sixers and Celtics are a combined 3-16 entering Friday. And the Spurs, whom the Rockets romped past in Thursday’s nationally-televised showdown, were missing Tim Duncan and Manu Ginobili. Of the six wins, only the rested Heat in Miami, where the Rockets won 108-91 on Tuesday, could constitute a “statement” victory.
There’s just one problem with that narrative, though. It ignores that a huge part of what ailed the 54-28, No. 4-seeded Rockets a season ago was that very inability to beat teams who, on paper, they should’ve beaten.
Exactly one year ago, the Rockets held the same Thursday-night TNT stage at Toyota Center and lost to the undermanned Lakers without Kobe Bryant (on a buzzer-beating three from Steve Blake). A week after that, they fell to those aforementioned Sixers. Before calendar-year 2013 ended, they would add two losses to the Kings and another to the Jazz. Flip even three of those five games, and that was the difference between the No. 4-seeded Rockets and the No. 3-seeded Clippers.
In short, those Rockets weren’t mature enough to bring the requisite effort night-in, night-out. Thus far in 2014-15, it’s been a dramatic improvement.
“I do like where our guys are at, as far as working hard,” said head coach Kevin McHale. “I don’t think that they have a lot of separate agendas. They seem to be all tied into, ‘Let’s just try to win this game.’
“I think last year, there were times when there was a lot of bickering because [someone thought] ‘You missed me!’ and things like that. But everyone gets missed. On the floor, stuff happens, and you just have to deal with it. It’s really hard to play defense when you’re running back off the offensive end and discussing whose fault a turnover was. Not the best time.”
Thus far, the results reflect that commitment. It’s not merely that they’re winning – it’s how they’re winning. Every victory has been by double digits, making the Rockets only the second team in NBA history (1985-86 Nuggets) to win their first six games by at least 10 or more. No opponent has scored over 93 points, helping the Rockets rank second in the NBA in points allowed, trailing only Memphis. Houston’s 14.7 point differential is second only to Golden State’s 15.8. It is no coincidence that those three aforementioned teams enter the weekend as the NBA’s only undefeated teams. Through six games, the Rockets have scored 243 points on 3-pointers and 246 on 2-pointers (plus 137 on FTs).
“Right now, everyone is focused and everyone is more committed,” said reserve guard Francisco Garcia, one of Houston’s elder statesmen and a renowned locker-room leader. “That loss in the playoffs last year kind of helped us a bit. It was heartbreaking the way it ended. We learned the hard way that defense is the key, so that’s what we’re doing right now. Every game.”
To Garcia’s point, a big part of Houston’s defensive improvement has come organically. In the middle, Dwight Howard looks healthier than he’s ever been in Houston, showing defensive range the league hasn’t seen since his Orlando days. And scoring leader James Harden, fresh off a gold-medal-winning performance with Team USA in the World Cup, is finally bringing intensity on both ends of the floor. On Thursday, rival San Antonio shooting guard Danny Green – the exact type of long-range bomber and cutter who in the past would’ve have a field day against Harden’s lack of awareness – scored just 10 points on 3-of-13 shooting.
But there’s another part of the defensive improvement that comes from an upgrade in personnel. Gone is Chandler Parsons, whose lackadaisical defense too often made for a devastating combination next to Harden. Replacing him is Trevor Ariza, one of the league’s better perimeter defenders. Dwyane Wade found that out Tuesday, when Ariza forced a pair of Wade misses and a turnover during the critical fourth-quarter stretch when Houston put Miami away.
There’s also Jason Terry, who isn’t a defensive stalwart but brings a championship pedigree and intensity that the former version of the Rockets was sorely deficient in.
“It helps a lot having veterans,” said Garcia. “We brought in two guys with championship experience in Trevor [Ariza] and JT [Terry]. We just have to keep working defensively and listen to what they have to say every game, because they’ve been there and done it.”
Even Kostas Papanikolaou, the 24-year-old Greek rookie forward, brings defensive chops after a title run with FC Barcelona of the premier Spanish League. Reserve big man Joey Dorsey, a teammate of Papanikolaou in Barcelona and now with the Rockets, referred to him as the team’s “stopper” in Spain.
“Everything for us starts with our defense,” said Papanikolaou. “Because on offense, you can have good days and bad days. But on defense, you can’t allow yourself to have a bad day. You have to give 100% every single day.”
It won’t always come easily. The Rockets do face a huge challenge Saturday when the also-unbeaten Warriors (4-0) visit Houston. But those were the games the Rockets actually fared well in a season ago. They beat the Warriors two of three times. They swept the eventual-champion Spurs, four games to none. They took three of four from Portland and posted late-season “statement” wins over the likes of Miami (with LeBron James) and Oklahoma City.
For a team with two of the league’s top 10 players in Harden and Howard, the questions were rarely about their upside in a given game. The questions were about the mental maturity for a young group to handle the grind of an 82-game regular season and extended playoff series.
It’s too early to declare those questions successfully answered, of course. But it’s certainly fair to consider Houston’s dominant early results a step in the right direction.
“I think that the past year was good for us,” Howard said Thursday. “Even though it ended on a sour note, we all had to look ourselves in the mirror and see what we had to do to help this team win.
“The great thing is that we talked a lot over the summer. Myself and James, Patrick [Beverley], Trevor, all the young guys. “We were in here every day talking about what we need to do to get better.
“And it’s showing on the floor.”
Ben DuBose is a veteran sports reporter who has followed the Houston Rockets and the NBA since Hakeem Olajuwon was Akeem Olajuwon. He writes for both SheridanHoops and ClutchFans, an independent Rockets blog. You can follow him on Twitter.