Houston Rockets: Effort Measured By Numbers
By Duncan Smith
The Rockets Don’t Rebound
On a team with Dwight Howard, Clint Capela and Terrence Jones getting minutes every night, you would think the Rockets would be among the league leaders in rebounding percentage. You would be wrong.
Kind of.
It’s important to note that Jones has missed five games, and Howard has already missed four games this season, and will continue to be rested in back-to-back situations and any time he needs a blow. That’s good, because it gets you to the playoffs with one of the best big men in the NBA in one piece.
Of course, the Rockets are 4-7 and the playoffs are the last thing on their minds right now, but preserving Howard’s health is essential.
When Howard does play, he’s one of the few Rockets holding his own on the floor. His plus-5 is the best net rating of all players who have played more than 200 minutes for the Rockets, and he’s averaging 15 points and 12.6 rebounds per game.
He can’t do everything though. The Rockets have the ninth-worst total rebounding percent at 47.9 percent, and it only goes up to 48.1 percent when he’s on the floor.
It’s worth noting that although the sample size is small, just 60 possessions, the Rockets rebounding percent goes up to 54.8 percent when Howard is on the floor without Lawson. Faulting Lawson in any large part for this may be misguided, though, because the team’s rebounding percent is still 48.1 percent when he’s off the floor as well.
One of the problems that come from featuring a small-ball lineup as the Rockets like to do, with Lawson, Marcus Thornton, Harden, Howard and Trevor Ariza, is that the main way of utilizing it is to leak out on offense and allow your big man to grab the rebound and outlet. It increases the number of possessions per game, but you have to control defensive rebounds in order to feature it effectively.
The Rockets have the second-worst defensive rebounding percent in the NBA with 72.2 percent, ahead of only the Milwaukee Bucks. Defensive rebounding isn’t something you can shirk responsibility on.
Many good teams that play small will largely eschew offensive rebounding, prefering instead to get back on defense and produce their offense on the fast break after getting stops, but you can’t shortcut bad defensive rebounding.
The Rockets are learning that the hard way.
Next: Injuries Are Unavoidable