Ranking The 5 Most Disappointing Teams In The NBA
1. Houston Rockets
Meet the NBA’s biggest train wreck. Coming off a 56-win season in which they showed great resilience and overcame a 3-1 series deficit to reach the Western Conference Finals, the Houston Rockets are 5-10 through their first 15 games and rank in the bottom six teams in the league for both offensive AND defensive efficiency.
From top to bottom, the Rockets have truly been a disaster. This hasn’t been a matter of shaking off rust or rounding into form with the addition of Ty Lawson; it’s been an outright disaster on both ends of the floor.
Though James Harden — the supposed leader of this team — is averaging 28.7 points, 6.3 assists and 6.1 rebounds per game, he’s only shooting 39.5 percent from the floor and 29 percent from three-point range. Even worse, his defense has reverted back to the completely lazy effort we saw a few years ago that prompted compilation videos of blown coverages that were minutes long.
The Beard has been a poor leader for this makeshift group, but the early firing of head coach Kevin McHale hasn’t changed anything with the team’s defensive effort. Even the benching of Lawson, who’s proven to be nothing less than a cancer to this team’s chemistry so far, hasn’t made a difference.
Dwight Howard missing games because of a nagging back injury hasn’t helped, nor have the absences of Patrick Beverley and Donatas Motiejunas. This Rockets aren’t at full strength yet, but last season, Harden was more than enough to help this ragtag bunch string wins together.
This year, Harden is failing as a leader and the Rockets are following suit. The blame doesn’t lie solely with the Beard, since this team’s problems extend much deeper than that, but the turnaround will have to start with him if it’s ever going to happen.