Houston Rockets: Troy Daniels, Breakout Star?

I give a lot of flack to the Houston Rockets and their presumably weak bench. Can you really blame me? After the Rockets swung and missed on Chris Bosh, the team is barren compared to last season. Chandler Parsons bolted to Dallas. Omer Asik was traded away for a first rounder. Jeremy Lin was ~~sentenced to NBA purgatory~~ traded to the Los Angeles Lakers alongside a first rounder. The bench clearly took a hit without Lin and Asik there to anchor the unit.

The good news is that there’s plenty of talent in the NBA. After all, you can’t make the NBA without talent, and there are some intriguing prospects on the Rockets bench. No other one caught my eye more than Troy Daniels. Not much is known about Daniels. He’s a shooting guard who was an undrafted free agent. He’s a relative unknown among NBA viewers. Taking a closer look, he’s a lot more than meets the eye. The most intriguing aspect of him: he’s an absolute dead-eye shooter from beyond the arch.

In an extremely small sample size last season, Daniels shot an outstanding 48 percent from three-point land. He was shooting threes at ridiculous levels in the minors. With the D-League Rio Grande Vipers, Daniels averaged 21.5 points per game while shooting 40.1 percent from deep. It wasn’t just that he was accurate; Daniels shot threes at a ridiculous rate. He shot so many of them, that he broke the D-League record for threes in a season in 27 games! That is an incredible amount of three-pointers made in such a short time span. The percentage is great, but not out of this world on its own. The amount of threes to go with that percentage makes it out of this world.

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Daniels averaged five made three-pointers per game. If he averaged that pace in the NBA over an 82-game season, Daniels would have made 410 three-pointers. The current record for threes made in a season is 272 by Stephen Curry in 2012-13, by the way. That’s a difference of 138 three-pointers. Think about that for a second.

Troy Daniels brings exactly what the Rockets need. Last year, the Rockets were a team that did not take midrange jump shots. It’s three or dunk for them. Outside of James Harden and his brilliant display of shooting, no other Rockets player was elite at it. With the addition of Trevor Ariza, and minutes for Daniels, that might change next year.

Now, the words “breakout star” are definitely an exaggeration. If given the minutes, he should become a very nice role player to have, but he won’t be a star by any stretch of the word. By all accounts, Daniels is a one-trick pony. He’s an incredible shooter and… not much else. He can’t generate offense off of the dribble, nor can he generate offense with his passing. We don’t really know if he can defend. That’s not a good question mark to have, but for an unproven player, it’s best to assume he can’t until he proves otherwise.

Because Kevin McHale is a coach who is often times inept with his X’s and O’s and general knowledge of coaching, it’s not a guarantee that Daniels could see regular minutes. That would be a shame because those minutes would likely be eaten up by the reanimated zombie that is Jason Terry. Obviously, there is no upside to playing a guy who is 36 and coming off of a season ending surgery, other than blind nostalgia.

If Daniels does get minutes, he needs to be put in the best position to succeed. That would obviously be alongside James Harden and Dwight Howard. With Harden and Howard’s general one on one dominance, a lot of defenses ball watch and try to double team them. That leaves the three-point shot wide open for a master three-point shooter. It would be raining points in Houston if everything were to fall into place.

I would shudder to see the offense if Daniels is in without Howard or Harden. With the Rockets not having any good creators other than those two (there are a few more, but they aren’t anywhere near as good), the offense would become stagnant and open three pointers would be hard to come by.

Used in the right situation, Daniels is a major weapon to have. He won’t be a Jamal Crawford-type, who completely dominates the ball and leads the bench unit, but he can still rack up the points really fast with his amazing three point shooting ability. If used correctly, the Rockets could have an incredibly efficient offense.

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