Houston Rockets: Short rotation will catch up in the long run
The Houston Rockets have been one of the best teams in the NBA so far this season. However, their short rotation will catch up to them soon.
The Houston Rockets have been one of the hottest (and best) teams in the NBA. Having reeled off a 14-game winning streak before falling to the Los Angeles Lakers Wednesday night, Houston currently sits at 25-5 and atop the Western Conference.
However, despite the team’s great play, there are several underlying concerns — most notably, the heavy minutes load some of the team’s most important players are dealing with as a result of a short rotation and injuries.
Coming into the season, it was expected that the Rockets would use a nine-man rotation, with an ideal starting lineup of Chris Paul, James Harden, Trevor Ariza, Ryan Anderson and Clint Capela supported by a bench unit of Eric Gordon, P.J. Tucker, Luc Mbah a Moute and Nene (with Tarik Black filling Nene’s role when he was resting).
An early injury to Paul caused him to miss 14 games, which put a lot of pressure (and minutes) on the backs of Gordon and Harden, with Bobby Brown or Demetrius Jackson attempting (and mostly failing) to provide spot minutes in the backcourt.
In October, Gordon averaged 34 minutes per game, which is well above the 30.3 and 31 minutes per game he has averaged in November and December, respectively. Meanwhile, Harden averaged 36.3 minutes per game in the first month of the season, which has slowly been cut down to around 35 per game in the two months since.
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In the past three games, Gordon has played 36, 36 and 30 minutes. For Harden, those numbers jump up to 43, 38 and 39 minutes.
It’s not only the guards that are suffering though. Trevor Ariza has played at least 41 minutes in the past four games, and is averaging 37.3 minutes per game in December. For a veteran in his 13th season, those minute totals are going to make their mark later in the season.
Now, to be fair to Mike D’Antoni, he is dealing with a top-heavy roster. Once the team loses 1-2 players due to injury, they’re simply short on quality NBA players. You can’t rely on players such as Zhou Qi and Bobby Brown to provide quality minutes. Troy Williams has flashed some “3-and-D” potential in the past, but even he’s been out with an injury in recent weeks.
With Luc Mbah a Moute out for at least another week or two and Chris Paul suffering a left leg injury in the loss to the Lakers, it looks like the Rockets will again turn to their key rotational players to pick up the minutes. Look for Harden, Gordon and Ariza to play significantly more than usual over the rest of the month, and then look for them to be extremely fatigued in March and April like in recent seasons.
The Rockets need to realize that they will only be judged by what happens in the playoffs. Games against sub-.500 teams in December don’t matter in the grand scheme of things. Therefore, there is no reason why any of their key players should be playing over 40 minutes in multiple games during a given week, especially for a team that relies on several players age 29 and older.
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The best-case scenario for Houston is that it gets healthy by the new year and picks up another bench piece to lessen the load down the stretch of the regular season. If the Rockets continue to struggle with injuries and can’t improve the end of the bench players, they are looking at another postseason run full of exhaustion and disappointment.