Oh boy. The last few days have not been very fun for the Houston Rockets or their fans. The team has played some of the worst basketball imaginable over the past four games. The team had started the year off hot, playing some of the smoothest looking play around. Everybody was hitting their open shots and playing enough defense to make games look easy. And suddenly, it’s gone. The team has played some excruciatingly ugly games recently. To say that this has not been a stretch of good basketball is an extreme understatement.
We’ll start with the game against the Philadelphia 76ers, a game in which the Rockets won 88-87 against what is basically a college basketball team. The 76ers are considered the worst basketball team in the league and it’s not even close, yet the Rockets just barely beat them while playing some of their worst ball of the season.
The team’s offense was hilariously inefficient, as they were jacking up shots left and right with little success. The Rockets tried hard to keep Philadelphia in it by committing 21 turnovers and having a slash line shooting percentage of .372/.206/.622 from the field. Luckily, Houston managed to pull out the victory because it’s extremely difficult to lose to a team that would struggle to beat your rec center basketball team.
Things didn’t get better for them after that, however. Houston moved on to play the Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook-less Thunder. As you know, Oklahoma City has 90 percent of it’s production coming in from those two players, so I figured this game wouldn’t be too difficult.
I didn’t know how wrong that statement would be.
To start, Houston was seemingly trying to out do themselves from the previous game’s performance. The two teams battled to one of the worst games I have ever had the “pleasure” of viewing. Nobody shot over 40 percent, and the team as a whole shot a line of .288/.200/.533. The ball was sticking to players’ hands and the few open shots the team generated didn’t fall. There were a few positives, at least. The team rebounded well and played some of the best defense they have played all year.
Ultimately, the Rockets scrapped their way to a 69-65 win, but they certainly didn’t look like a team that was deserving of that 9-1 record.
And then the Rockets got absolutely pummeled by the Memphis Grizzlies, to a final score of 119-93. That’s not something you want to see, especially not from a team that was expected to contend in the West. All that defense they played against Oklahoma City was gone, as the Rockets allowed the Grizzlies to do whatever they wanted. As a result, Memphis shot over 53 percent and scored 119 points. I know playing a Western Conference team can be tough, but this was absolutely embarrassing.
There was a silver lining to this game and it’s the fact that the Rockets offense showed some slight improvement by shooting 43.5 percent, though that did come with another horrid three point shooting game. Shooting 23.5 percent from downtown is not going to cut it.
So if you’re keeping track, that’s three absolutely horrid games, with two of those being wins. The fourth game we need to talk about was actually not a terrible performance. Houston still lost to the Los Angeles Lakers, but their performance was much better, at least offensively.
The team reached moderately normal percentages, shooting a high 39.5 percent from deep and 40.5 percent from the field in total. Unfortunately, the team let it slip away at the end. This is definitely a game the Rockets should be winning, even without Dwight Howard.
All of this just leads me to the reason for me talking about this: there’s no need to panic. We can all agree that the team has played some of the worst professional basketball the NBA has seen this season. The ball is sticking to players hands, there’s no movement going on and contested shots are being taken. The team has some work to do, but that’s okay.
You see, we already knew that there was almost no way they could sustain their red hot shooting to start the year. The team was leading the league in three-point shooting percentage with over 44 percent from beyond the arc. That is insane and entirely unsustainable. Naturally, once the team regressed, there was going to be a rough patch. The Rockets have handled it admirably, as they managed to go 2-2 instead of 0-4 during this stretch.
There is definitely no need to panic in Houston. Sometimes, the shots are simply not falling. That doesn’t mean the team isn’t one of the best in the league. Long range shooting percentages fluctuate over an NBA season. This is one of the best long range shooting teams in the league, yet they rank 14th, shooting 35.4 percent, after this current slump. Once the team picks it back up, there will be a higher quality of basketball from the team.
It’s simply a cold spell. There is nothing wrong with Houston that can’t be fixed by getting Howard and Terrence Jones back. Or making an extra pass or two to get an open shot. Everything will return to normal and we can resume our normal, excellent basketball viewing experience in a week or two. At least, that’s what we hope will happen.