How the Rockets can win the title

When the Rockets traded Clint Capela for Robert Covington, the entire basketball world was incredulous.

Capela was fourth in the entire NBA in rebounding, and the only center the Rockets could rely on for any sort of heavy – or even light – lifting. The Rockets’ conference features Anthony Davis, Nikola Jokic, Kristaps Porzingis, Rudy Gobert, Jusuf Nurkic, and first-round matchup Steven Adams. Just on the eight playoff teams. Would P.J. Tucker, age 35 and all of 6-foot-5, play 35 minutes a night at the five? Were they that confident in Isaiah Hartenstein and 37-year-old Tyson Chandler?

Kind of, and no.

P.J Tucker plays some center, along with 6’6” combo forward Danuel House. Chandler has not appeared in a game since the Covington acquisition. Hartenstein played in two games and was cut.

Apparently, this was for the best, and apparently, getting rebounds is ugly. Now, the Rockets play symphonically within what coach Mike D’Antoni and GM Daryl Morey dreamt. They take more threes since the trade than any team in the NBA by a full 7 attempts. They are 29th in rebounding. Threes, layups, and free throws - all the Rockets take - are the most efficient shots in the sport of basketball in terms of points per attempt.

Houston leads the NBA in points from three, are fifth in points from the free throw line, and seventh in field goal percentage from within 5 feet. This is how math tells you to win. If they are on enough, they out-efficiency opponents as the game goes on. If they get hot four times out of seven, they will outscore any team. Forgive the analytic, but when you do that you win the game. If they get hot 16 times, they will have a ring.

Let’s spell that out.

Basics. The Rockets are obviously led by James Harden and Russell Westbrook. On offense, the third cog is guard and prolific scorer Eric Gordon, who dropped 50 in a game against Utah when the two former MVPs both sat.

On defense, they’re led by P.J. Tucker, the do-it-all man who has always defended and rebounded above his size, maybe more than anyone in the Association. He also has led the league in shooting percentage on corner 3’s. Houston supplemented both sides of the ball with Robert Covington, the exemplary 3-and-D man. At 6-foot-9, Covington is the exact same height as Clint Capela. The similarities end there.

The rest of their rotation is a lot more of the same: ball handler Austin Rivers, versatile 6-foot-6 forward Danuel House, athletic shooting guard Ben McLemore, and balanced veteran Jeff Green. Thabo Sefolosha plays spot minutes as a defensive specialist wing, and DeMarre Carroll is a depth 3-and-D piece. Chandler is on the roster for moral support.

When you have two Hall of Fame-level passers and drivers like Russ and Harden, the lack of size on offense helps. They are one-third of players in NBA history (!!) with both a scoring and assist title. Capela being gone has given them extra space, and an extra shooter to operate with/pass to.

No center means there is no large, slow human being lurking around the rim, taking up space, and tethering a large opposing rim protector next to the basket. Dudes like Rudy Gobert will not be able to guard pseudo-centers Tucker and House on the perimeter, so they become relatively unplayable. The two MVPs get more and easier layups, with a lot less help defense from deterring bigs, or they attract a double and have 3-4 lethal shooters to dish to. Then, those guys are all capable of handling the ball or rotating it to expose the helper and attack soft spots in the defense.

This is what D’Antoni and Morey bet on: Capela took away x amount of points with his rim protection, but replacing him will add y amount of points to the offense, hopefully a bigger number.

Increasing the prominence of James Harden and Russell Westbrook in your offense is never a bad idea. They have the pedigree and usage history to be able to hold up. Playing slightly overlapping positions actually helps them, since they don’t need one another on the floor to be successful. This means the Rockets will have at worst one MVP, scoring champion, and assist champion on the floor, operating with four capable shooters/scorers.

The defense is not ever going to do what it could with Capela; centers influence defenses more than any other position because of their rim protection. e.g. Rudy Gobert saves his team more points than Kawhi Leonard, even though Kawhi can lock up much better one-on-one. Gobert impacts the other team’s offense more by contesting everyone’s shots, not just his mark’s.

To cut the defense up as certainly worse without Capela is still a slight over-simplification. The Rockets defensive rating has gone from 15th before the trade to 9th since the trade. They lead the NBA in blocks per game somehow in that span. Their 9.9 steals per game and 17.9 turnovers forced are both second in the NBA, behind only the forlorn Chicago Bulls.

“Switch everything” has been a vogue phrase surrounding basketball since the Cavs and Warriors started dueling, but this team takes that to an unprecedented level. Harden, Tucker, House, and now Robert Covington can defend well, and admirably, above their size/position. Gordon can be great and usually gets the opponent's best perimeter player. Russ, admittedly only when he's locked in, can be a gambling/turnover pest. Green is versatile. McLemore and Rivers are fine, and Sefolosha and Carroll are really good.

To drum on Robert Covington quickly, it is important to point out what he does well defensively. He is not a Kawhi Leonard or Tony Allen lockdown defender at the point of attack. He is very good at that too, but isolation isn’t his main impact. He is feisty and incredibly intelligent. He knows exactly when to gamble and how to help. He fills exactly – and better – the gape that Trevor Ariza left after the 2017-18 season, where Houston was a game away from knocking off the Kevin Durant Warriors.

Covington is 6-foot-9 with a 7-foot-2 wingspan. He rebounds better than Ariza, is stronger, a better defender down low, and shoots .4% better from three over his career. While he’s nowhere near Capela’s heft (same height but 30 pounds lighter and shorter arms), the Rockets aren’t totally bereft of size with him on the floor. A lot of teams attack the small Rockets with frequent post-ups. The Rockets respond with surprising lower-body strength (what matters in the post) like Tucker, House, Harden, Green, and Covington have, and collapsing rotations. Bigs are not adept at passing or dribbling, so swarming with doubles and active hands like Covington can force them into an uncomfortable playmaking situation.

The Rockets play a lot of bigs who aren’t very inside-talented off of the floor. They’re a liability on defense every time down because the five-out offense pulls them to an uncomfortable position on the perimeter. On offense, since post-ups just straight up aren’t efficient plays compared to other options, even the added size advantages aren’t worth it a lot of the time math-wise. Bigs don’t post up well or dominate the offense anymore. Less rim protection from Houston’s opponents is going to couple with Harden and Westbrook’s world-class finishing/dishing abilities to make attacking the rim even more efficient.

The timing of this experiment is no accident, and honestly ingenious. The Rockets have started an analytics wave that has swept the entire sport. Teams shoot more 3’s than ever. The 30th team in the league, Indiana, attempts 28.0 3’s per game. That would have been the most in the NBA just six years ago. It would have been second-most five years ago ('14-15), ahead of the champion Golden State Warriors, whose style of play led by Steph and Klay trailblazed modern three-point shooting and spacing. The switch everything capabilities allow them to defend modern NBA offense, which is driven by three-pointers and three-guard lineups (Oklahoma City, Portland, Dallas, and Utah run a lot of these in the West).

Even still, rebounding is going to be hard. This team is ridiculously and incomparably small. League-tops rebounding teams basically always make noise. When Oklahoma City was making runs every year, they consistently led the league. The Bucks have been first place in the last two seasons. The Clippers are third this season. But there are outliers: Golden State’s three recent rings: 13th, 9th, and 21st in rebounding. Toronto last year was 22nd. Houston was 8th at the time of the Capela trade, and 29th after. However, this comes at a cost to opponents.

The Rocket’s five-out offense is the biggest temptation and the biggest threat to rebounding. Teams are going to be tempted to crash the offensive glass like they could never even dream before. They’ll get a lot of them, but not a suddenly disproportionate amount. You just can’t control how the ball careens off the rim. The defense will always have the advantage on a given rebound because they’re closer to the rim and in front of the offense.

Because of the personnel they’re running, the Rockets’ rebounder will be someone who can push the floor. Westbrook is second amongst guards in rebounding, and Harden is fourth. A lot of people discount their high rebounding numbers as stat padding and triple-double hunting. It’s more than that.

When your primary ball-handler gets the rebound, it allows four players instead of three to instantly push up the floor and fill lanes. It gets your team into the offense quicker and lets your team/lead guard control the pace. Houston is second in the NBA in pace. They’re good at - and experienced - playing blitzkrieg fast. Crashing the glass too hard against them and failing will get punished. The Rockets are then going to have numbers, top-tier spacing, top-tier shooting, and the opposing rim protector will be AWOL. More often than not, the ball will be in Harden or Westbrook’s hands straight off the rim. They orchestrate breaks peerlessly. For this reason, teams don’t totally sell-out to embarrass them on the glass; there are too many other things at play.

This isn’t to say that the Rockets personnel is never going to get exposed. A lot of teams are just really big and really talented. Anthony Davis and LeBron James come to mind. The Clippers’ size and skill could be a nightmare matchup. Denver having Nikola Jokic as their offense’s focal point would give them fits on defense too. Luka Doncic is a transcendent talent and the only guard averaging more rebounds than Russ. Kristaps Porzingis is the most mobile 7’3” in NBA history.

One thing we do know is that this team coming together at the trade deadline is kind of perfect. Oklahoma City has not seen the Rockets since the Covington trade. While there is plenty of tape at this point, they still have no live experience playing against this revolution. Russell Westbrook being out for the first few games adds a monumental chess piece when he returns.

Whether you like the Rockets or not, what they are trying to do is absolutely fascinating. The thing about this brand-new play style is that it isn’t gimmicky, it’s novel. Whether small-ball works or not, it isn’t going anywhere. This isn’t the wildcat coming to the NFL, it’s the spread offense.