Houston Rockets: The Rockets Are On Fire
There is absolutely no way to deny it: the Houston Rockets are on fire right now. After a shaky offseason that brought more questions than answers, a lot of people thought the Rockets had taken a step back, or at best, were as good as last year’s squad. At the start of the season, I don’t think anybody realistically envisioned the Rockets playing as well as they have through the first six games of the season.
And here we are, six games into the season and six wins for the Rockets. Houston has been playing at an incredible pace to start the year and there doesn’t appear to be signs of them slowing down. Through the first six games of the year, the Rockets have won every single game by a wide margin. Through six wins, the Rockets average win margin is an incredible 14.6 points per game. Houston has demolished every single opponent they have played.
With the Rockets’ impressive play comes a few questions. Mainly, can the team keep up this incredible play? As it is, Houston is averaging a stellar 104.5 points per game, which effectively ranks the team as the second best offensive team. While the team is absolutely burning the nets, they are also keeping their own on the defensive end. The Rockets are only allowing 91.4 points per game, which is very good, but only ranks 14th in the NBA. Due to the small sample size early on in the year, a lot of teams have inflated stats to start the year. As soon as some of those numbers go up, that 91.4 points allowed will be a top 10 ranked defense.
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Clearly, the Rockets are doing a lot of good things. They are a team that takes and makes a lot of three-point shots. In fact, Houston takes 32.2 three-pointers per game and makes 14.2 threes per game, both marks rank first in the league. The Rockets are shooting the lights out from deep, as their 44.1 percent from downtown is also ranked 1st.
The Rockets haven’t been met by much resistance to start the year, however. Through the first six games, the team has only played two playoff teams. The Los Angeles Lakers, Utah Jazz, Boston Celtics and the Philadelphia 76ers aren’t exactly the cream of the crop in the league. The good news is that the Rockets have completely demolished the last two NBA champions in the span of three days. Of course, the Miami Heat no longer employ LeBron James, but they are still a playoff caliber team. The dismantling of the San Antonio Spurs last night is extremely encouraging.
Despite how hot the Rockets have started, it will be very difficult to keep that long range percentage as high as it is. A high three point shooting percentage is hard to maintain in the NBA, and the Rockets are bound to fall closer to the mean than stay up at a crazy high 44 percent. Even if the Rockets fall off a bit, they have still been playing stellar basketball thanks to the incredible duo of James Harden and Dwight Howard.
As surprisingly good as the team has been, we should curb our expectations accordingly. Teams heat up and go through shooting slumps all of the time and the Rockets will be no different as the year goes on. Let’s enjoy this run of exceptional basketball while it lasts.