It’s time we start appreciating these Houston Rockets for what they are instead of wondering what could be down the road.
For much of the 2014-15 season, the narrative about Houston for many around the NBA — myself included — has been more about the future than the present. Sure, today looked nice with James Harden and Dwight Howard, but general manager Daryl Morey seemed so close to forming a “Super Team” last summer with Chris Bosh and again at the trade deadline with Goran Dragic that it became easy to focus on what could be with potential big acquisitions down the line.
Fortunately for Houston, Morey himself didn’t adopt that single-track premise. Despite failing to acquire his coveted third star, Morey consistently churned through his roster over the last 12 months to improve the collection of role players around Harden and Howard, headlined by Trevor Ariza, Jason Terry, Corey Brewer, Josh Smith and Pablo Prigioni. And while Harden and Howard were each magnificent for much of their second-round series with the Clippers, it was contributions from those five that proved essential in enabling the Rockets to overcome a 3-1 series deficit to defeat Los Angeles and advance to the franchise’s first Western Conference Finals since 1997.
“We had every opportunity to give up, but we continued to fight, to trust each other,” Howard said after a Game 7 in which the Rockets led wire-to-wire. “We got a great [series] win against a great team.”
A day after Bosh jilted Houston at the 11th hour last July, it would’ve been easy for Morey and the Rockets to lick their wounds. Instead, he was already putting the wheels of his contingency plan in motion. Less than 24 hours later, the Rockets secured a verbal commitment from Ariza to rejoin the franchise, essentially replacing Chandler Parsons at small forward and offering a more defensive-oriented complement alongside Harden on the wing.
Ten months later, it’s clear that was the right move. As the only Rocket to play and start in all 82 games of the season, Ariza was Houston’s rock all year and a defensive star against everyone from point guards to power forwards. We saw all of that throughout the Rockets/Clippers series and even in Game 7, with Ariza spending stretches on Blake Griffin, a physical big man, and then Chris Paul — a quick, small guard.
Meanwhile, on offense, Ariza added 22 points — 16 in the second half — on lights-out shooting (6-of-12) from behind the arc, including a dagger triple with under a minute left Sunday to ice the game. For the series as a whole, Ariza played a team-leading 38.9 minutes per game, scoring 16.7 points (45.3-percent FG, 41.2-percent three-point FG, 90-percent FT) to go with 6.9 rebounds and 2.1 steals.
“Just understanding what we do, knowing who we are, digging deep, looking ourselves in the mirror and telling yourself to strap it up and let’s go,” Ariza said of his team’s series comeback. “That’s all it takes.”
While Ariza was the rock in the series and the 113-100 Game 7 win, it was Prigioni — perhaps the most overlooked of all of Morey’s moves — who was the spark plug. On the day of his 38th birthday, the veteran guard Morey plucked from the Knicks at the deadline (after failing to make a splashier move, such as for Dragic) had the highest plus/minus on the entire Houston roster at +20 in just 20 minutes.
When Prigioni came off the bench midway through Sunday’s third quarter, the Rockets’ 15-point first half lead on the Clippers had been whittled down to seven, and the delirious excitement inside Toyota Center throughout the first half had transitioned to nervous energy. But after two crucial steals, an assisted three to Ariza and a made trey of his own, the Rockets pushed the lead to 17 after three quarters and were never seriously threatened again.
“Pablo Prigioni – his minutes tonight were so key for us,” Terry said. “It sparked us. It led us on that run. We were able to get that lead. He was phenomenal.”
Smith and Brewer were certainly useful in Sunday’s Game 7, scoring a combined 26 points on 10-of-18 shooting. But they’ll forever be remembered most in Houston for what they did in Game 6. With the MVP runner-up Harden sick and struggling to find his shot, those two combined to score 29 points in the fourth quarter alone — helping the Rockets rally from a 19-point deficit in a road elimination game with only 14 minutes remaining.
Moreover, the December additions of Brewer and Smith helped the Rockets overcome injuries to Howard and forward Terrence Jones that would’ve crippled most teams with visions of contending. The Rockets weren’t considered a particularly deep team when the 2014-15 season began, and if league observers had known beforehand that Howard and Jones would each miss at least half of the season, some may have predicted the Rockets to miss the playoffs entirely.
Instead, Brewer and Smith each gave the Rockets more than 25 quality minutes per night — sometimes many more. Because of that, the Rockets were able to be more patient with Howard in his second absence rehabbing his injured knee — and they’re reaping the rewards now, with Howard looking the most athletic he has in years and again becoming the most dominant big man in the NBA.
Make no mistake about it: the Rockets are still Howard and Harden’s group, and head coach Kevin McHale has done a wonderful job all year, especially in these playoffs. Harden led the way with 31 points and eight assists in Game 7, and his triple-double through illness in Game 5 (26 points, 11 rebounds, 10 assists) was the stuff legends are made of. But surrounding those two and the coach with Smith, Prigioni and the championship-tested trio of Ariza (2009 Lakers), Brewer (2011 Mavs) and Terry (2011 Mavs) has given the Rockets a mental resilience they lacked a season ago when they surprisingly exited after the first round.
“A lot of people counted us out, down 3-1,” Smith said following Game 7. “But we stayed fighting.”
None of this is to say these Rockets are a finished product. They own the No. 18 and No. 32 picks in this June’s NBA Draft. They could have cap space in July, should they choose to go that route. They employ two rookie prospects in rising center Clint Capela and swingman K.J. McDaniels who might be lottery picks if the 2014 NBA Draft were redone. They hold the NBA rights to 27-year-old Spanish star Sergio Llull, one of the top point guards in Europe. Beyond that, Morey’s trade assets and cap-friendly contracts throughout the roster are plentiful, as usual. Houston will also get promising young big man Donatas Motiejunas — and perhaps point guard Pat Beverley, should they re-sign him — back from season-ending injuries. In the interim, the Rockets are certainly underdogs to the top-seeded Golden State Warriors — their upcoming opponent in the Western Conference Finals — and the time may come to debate which of those steps will be the key to getting Houston over that final hump.
But that time isn’t now. Today, the focus should be on this team and what already is.
These Rockets aren’t flukes to be where they are. They were the No. 2 seed in a loaded West after a long 82-game season, and now they’re also in the final two of the West playoffs. Though they became just the ninth team in NBA history to overcome a 3-1 playoff deficit to win a series, they actually made it look relatively easy — winning each of the final three games against the star-studded Clippers by double-digits. The deeper the series went, the more the Rockets and their newfound depth seemed to simply wear down the thinner rotation of Los Angeles.
Morey certainly landed two stars in Harden and Howard to lead the way and he may yet acquire another, but his brilliance runs deeper than star-chasing. In the end, the essence of Morey and his staff in Houston is that they always seem to have a contingency and an ability to work on multiple tracks and switch gears on the fly, as needed. Plan B wasn’t as box-office flashy as Plan A after losing out on Bosh and Parsons, but the tenacity, grit and battle-tested experience of Morey’s latest additions around the Big Two has lifted the Rockets from a first-round exit to their highest point in 18 years, and they could still rise more in the coming weeks.
Perhaps the future is even brighter, but thinking of the Rockets in those terms sells short what they’re doing as we speak. After knocking off the Clippers and punching their ticket to the NBA’s Final Four, these Rockets are bonafide contenders now.
Plan A or Plan B, they’re playing basketball deep into May and possibly June. Isn’t that what matters? Though many blasted the Rockets for a failed offseason, it’s Morey who again has the last laugh.
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.