Houston Rockets: It's Sink Or Swim For Donatas Motiejunas

It’s so easy to forget that the Rockets employ the services of Donatas Motiejunas. Of all of Houston’s bench players, he is one of the least recognizable. It doesn’t help that he has been entirely replaceable in his two seasons in the NBA.

Who is Donatas Motiejunas? What does he bring to the table for the Houston Rockets? Well, it’s a bit hard to answer that. Motiejunas looks great in garbage time, rebounding and scoring at a solid clip. But, whenever he plays meaningful minutes, he hasn’t let any of his talent shine. Motiejunas doesn’t get a lot of opportunities with the team. Being too small to play the center position, Motiejunas is strictly a power forward. That already limits his time on the court. The fact that he was buried on the depth chart last year behind Omer Asik and Terrence Jones just cut into his minutes even more.

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That still doesn’t answer the question. What can he do? He hasn’t shown a ton of post moves, as he does most of them to try and get to the same spot. That makes him predictable in the post and easy to cover. He hasn’t shown that he can play great defense. He’s been mediocre defensively in his first two seasons. He can still improve, of course.

He isn’t a physical specimen either. Despite being seven feet tall, he only weighs 220 pounds. He is a lot smaller than the average small forward, so he gets pushed around in the post by the majority of the big men in the NBA. Usually, the smaller big men can shoot three pointers, so that means Motiejunas can stretch the floor, right?

Well, that’s not the case. Motiejunas looks great shooting warm up jumpers, but it hasn’t translated into actual results. Motiejunas has a career 26.9 percent from beyond the arch, and that’s simply not going to cut it at the NBA level. Despite his height, Motiejunas isn’t a good rebounding presence either. Over his career, he only averages 3.0 rebounds per game.

It seems Motiejunas is destined to be out of the league at some point soon. He hasn’t shown a lot of improvement over his two seasons and in fact, he regressed during his sophomore year. He has the tendency to go away from the basket, opting to stay out in the perimeter. That’s not going to work for him going forward, seeing as he can’t hit the long ball at a high enough percentage for him to do that. Going forward, he’s going to need to attack the basket if he wants to experience more success with Houston.

He has shown flashes of potentially becoming a pretty good role player for the team. He has occasionally shown a nice stroke from deep and a solid rebound rate, considering that Howard, Jones and Asik were always there to eat up all of the rebounds. That is one aspect that he improved from his rookie to his sophomore year: his rebounding.

The formula is simple for Motiejunas. He needs to find ways to improve his play without the ball. When he gets the ball, he needs to shoot the ball well. He needs to continue to improve his rebounding and he has to find a way to play adequate defense. He doesn’t need to force his offense, as teams will focus on Howard and James Harden. If Motiejunas can find a way to make the most out of his minutes, he could stick around in Houston for a while.

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Houston Rockets: It’s Sink Or Swim For Donatas Motiejunas

By Kevin Sanchez | Oct 24, 2014