The Houston Rockets’ offense has been a bit of a mystery this season. On the one hand, they rank fifth in offensive efficiency. Yet and still, at times, their offense looks stagnant.\u00a0<\/p>\n
They rely on offensive rebounds to give them higher percentage putback buckets, either by way of wide open kick out threes or second-chance buckets at or near the rim.<\/p>\n
But even that’s been happening less frequently, without Steven Adams — easily the game’s best offensive rebounder this season.<\/p>\n
(And during his era).<\/p>\n
We saw it during Houston’s game against the LA Clippers on Wednesday night — the Rockets’ second night of a home-and-home back-to-back.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Against the same opponent.<\/p>\n
Houston’s offense got stale in the second half, prompting Kevin Durant to score seven straight in the fourth quarter to tie the game.<\/p>\n
Even though Houston was previously up by 15 points. The Rockets ultimately lost.<\/p>\n
Oftentimes, the Rockets rely on Durant to bail them out of bad offensive possessions, as he’s forced to hit a shot with an insanely high degree of difficulty (with defenders draped all over him or double teams, in many cases).<\/p>\n
The Rockets’ lack of a table-setting point guard rears its ugly head in these situations.<\/p>\n
All told, Houston’s offensive limitations has drawn the attention of Brian Windhorst — ESPN’s long-time NBA insider.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“The offense did not get me any more confident. Because you know they are a top-five offensive team. It’s kind of crazy when you watch them play and say, ‘man they’re a top-five offense.’<\/p>\n
But when they get into clutch time, they’re bottom-ten.<\/p>\n
And so I’m watching them and there’s whole possessions where the ball is not moving.<\/p>\n
Some baskets off of offensive rebounds and turnovers, otherwise I’m a little worried about them.”<\/p>\n
It’s not a secret that the ball oftentimes sticks for the Rockets offensively.\u00a0<\/p>\n
They rank bottom-eight in passes made per game and bottom-six in points created by assists.<\/p>\n
And they don’t have a three-point heavy offensive attack.<\/p>\n
Far from it.\u00a0<\/p>\n
These Rockets take just 30.5 long-range attempts per game, which ranks 29th.<\/p>\n
Second to last.\u00a0<\/p>\n
There’s some encouragement on that front, however, as Houston has shown a recent positive trend in getting their long-range shots up.<\/p>\n
Houston took 43 threes against the Oklahoma City Thunder and 36 threes against the Clippers, in their final game before the All-Star break.<\/p>\n
That would help the offense overcome their limitations, but the point guard need may not get addressed, outside of Fred VanVleet making a miraculously speedy return from his torn ACL.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Houston Rockets’ offense has been a bit of a mystery this season. On the one hand, they…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":599178,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3794],"tags":[7,292,194,4066,6,211],"class_list":{"0":"post-599177","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston-rockets","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-houston","10":"tag-houston-rockets","11":"tag-houstonrockets","12":"tag-nba","13":"tag-rockets"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116058630819090405","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=599177"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599177\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/599178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=599177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=599177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=599177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}