Playoff Picture: Houston Rockets
By Luke Duffy
Why They’ll Fall Short
The playoffs are about superstars, and Houston have one and a half in Harden and Howard. The only problem there however, is that other teams have more stars, and in turn more ways to hurt opponents. The Rockets counteract this, however, by having role players in Ariza and Smith who can go off themselves and have big nights.
Having Jason Terry or Pablo Prigioni (both 37) as your floor generals for 48 minutes combined will hurt this team though, especially on the defensive end.
This team also only seems to have one form of offense, and that is to pass Harden the ball. It’s a great move when he’s rolling or dominating his matchup, but is it enough to carry a whole team through the playoffs? Yes they can dump the ball into Howard now for more easy points, but he is still working his way back into playing condition, averaging 18 minutes a game since returning from injury.
It’s been said that in order to think seriously about winning a championship, a team needs to have a top 10 offense and defense. Houston checks the defensive box, but offensively they’re only just better than league average (12th in the NBA, with 103.9 points per contest).
With Harden accounting for so much of those points, the offense can die when he goes to the bench. Look, they are true contenders for a title, but there’s a couple of real red flags here.
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