It seems like the Houston Rockets are willing to try nearly anything to get out of their early-season funk. As we approach the quarter pole of the NBA season, Houston has already replaced its head coach and is trying numerous different lineup combinations. To put it nicely, things are still a work in progress for the Rockets.
After needing overtime to defeat the Knicks, who were without Carmelo Anthony because of an illness, on Sunday, Houston stumbled to a 116-105 loss to Detroit on Monday after giving up 64 points in the first half.
Interim coach J.B. Bickerstaff, who replaced the fired Kevin McHale on Nov. 18 after a 4-7 start, is still trying to tinker with the team’s rotation to bring it back to last year’s prominence, when Houston reached the conference finals for the first time since the 1996-1997 season.
After benching top offseason acquisition Ty Lawson against New York, it was Jason Terry’s turn to ride the pine against the Pistons. Most notably among the numerous and constant changes in the team’s rotation is the insertion of athletic 21-year-old Swiss center Clint Capela into the starting lineup and Patrick Beverley’s unquestioned status, once again, as the Houston top point guard.
We all know the Rockets have the ability to score, but it was their newfound attention to defense that elevated Houston to the league’s final four last season. The team has regressed in that regard this season, as you’ll see in this chart.
| Rockets Defense (League Rank) | Scoring D | Def. Rating | FG % | 3 FG % | Turnovers |
| 2014-2015 | 100.5 (17) | 103.4 (8) | 44.3 (12) | 32.2 (1) | 16.4 (3) |
| 2015-2016 | 107.9 (28) | 109.2 (27) | 47.2 (30) | 36.1 (20) | 15.6 (9) |
Houston allows nearly seven more points per game and almost six more points per 100 possessions so far this season. They’re dead last in opponent’s field goal percentage and down 19 spots in defending the three.
“Defensively, we’re not nearly the team that we’re going to be,” Terry told SheridanHoops. “Communication is number one, that’s very key. And then not making multiple errors on one single possession. Once we eliminate those errors and communicate more, then we’ll be headed in the right direction.”
Dwight Howard has already missed five of the team’s first 18 games, and Houston needs to pair him with Capela to shore up the team’s shoddy rim protection. Opponents are shooting 62.2 percent from the restricted area against the Rockets so far this season, according to NBA.com, which is the third-worst percentage in the league. Bickerstaff stressed how important having Howard and Capela on the court together is for their defense.
“Now if guys go into the paint, they’ll have two guys they’ve gotta deal with,” Bickerstaff said. “One guy can challenge the shot and the other guy can go get the rebound.”
When Houston only played one true big, that center would go out to challenge the shot and only leave a smaller wing player to contest for the rebound, Bickerstaff said. Houston has allowed the third-highest offensive rebound percentage in the league, per NBA.com, leading to 14.9 second chance points per game. which is also 28th in the league.
Bickerstaff believes that having Beverley, Howard and Capela in the starting lineup every game will alleviate many of these defensive concerns. Houston is +4 points per 48 minutes with Capela on the floor and -12.5 while he’s on the bench, per NBA.com. That’s a huge difference that the analytically inclined Rockets surely realize.
“Clint’s been playing really well for us. We’re going to try to get him more minutes,” Bickerstaff said. “Putting him alongside Dwight gives us versatility along with some added length that we thought we needed.”
Howard said that Capela had posters of him as he was growing up and now they’re teammates in the starting lineup. Howard said he stresses to Capela every day how it’s a dream come true to be in the NBA and that Capela works hard in practice. He praised Capela for his energy, ability to run the floor, and willingness to learn how to play great defense.
In addition to the defense, it seems like effort and discipline is what the team lacks early on — a prime reason for the departure of McHale.
“Our transition defense was horrible and we weren’t stopping guys,” veteran forward Corey Brewer told SheridanHoops, adding that the team wasn’t making effort plays like getting 50-50 balls.
“I still think we’re trying to figure everything out, period,” said forward Trevor Ariza. “We know what we did last year and we feel like we have that same team. We still have to find a rhythm together and we’ve gotta continue to get stops.”
While Brewer stressed that the onus in on the players, not the coaching staff, to get things right, players on the team discussed what Bickerstaff now brings to the table.
“The difference with J.B. is discipline, accountability and attention to detail,” Terry said. “He preaches those three things. Not that McHale didn’t, but he overemphasizes it. It struck a nerve.”
Beverley said that the team is now tougher under Bickerstaff. Brewer said that Bickerstaff has tried to bring more positivity. But the results show there isn’t much of a difference with the team other than that.
“As players, we weren’t playing defense, we weren’t moving the ball and we were getting our butts kicked,” Brewer said. “We were playing bad and things are going to be negative when you’re playing badly. You wouldn’t be an NBA basketball player if you weren’t negative or mad about playing bad.”
With any new coach in the league, getting your star player to buy in is crucial, and so far Howard is saying the right things when it comes to Bickerstaff.
“He’s done an excellent job so far and we really trust him and we really believe in him and we’re going to go out there and play hard every night,” Howard told SheridanHoops.
Bickerstaff is still trying to find the right rotations and lineup combinations to make this work. In addition to regular starters like Howard, James Harden (remember him?), Beverley, Ariza, Capela, Lawson and Terrence Jones, Marcus Thornton has played a major role on the team so far this season and is 6th on the club in minutes played.
“Being the competitor that I am, that’s what’s made it kind of frustrating,” Thornton said about the team trying to find the right lineups. “But you have to stay the course. Like I’ve been saying since day one, it’s all about opportunity and timing.”
“We have a talented team,” Beverley said. “We’re still just trying to put the right core together to try to move forward.”
As Oklahoma City learned last season, slow starts can be difficult to overcome in the Western Conference. But with hard work, effort and improved defense and chemistry, Houston still feels like it can find the right lineups and turn things around quickly enough. The return of versatile stretch-four Donatas Motiejunas should help immensely as well, but will further muddle the team’s lineup combos in the short term.
“The chemistry wasn’t where it should be and we weren’t playing hard enough,” Terry said. “In this league on most nights, everybody has talent, but the team that plays harder usually has the advantage. And that was the other team early on.”
Howard also stressed that hard work is going to turn things around for the Rockets.
“We started off the season pretty slow, but that’s where myself, Jet and the rest of the leaders on the team we just stayed in the gym and did more work to get where we are,” Howard said. “And I believe that once this thing turns around, we’ll all look back and say ‘man, the situation that we went through, it really helped us grow as a team.'”
Shlomo Sprung is a national columnist for SheridanHoops who focuses on analytics, profiles and features. He is also the web editor of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. A 2011 graduate of Columbia University’s Journalism School, he has previously worked for the New York Knicks, The Sporting News, Business Insider and other publications. You should follow him on Twitter.