Houston Rockets: Time for Clint Capela to get more touches?

The Houston Rockets are off to a slow start, which raises the glaring question: Is it time for Clint Capela to get more touches?

The Houston Rockets are a little off from where they left off last season, but Clint Capela looks ready as ever to help dig the team out of an early hole. The young center is one of the more promising big men in the entire NBA and looks prepared to take the next step in his career.

With the Rockets struggling to win games, and their 3-point percentage being down 4.4 percent from last year, should they be feeding the ball to Capela more often?

It’s a tough question, especially when you have James Harden and Chris Paul in your backcourt. However, the statistics show that it might be time for a little bit more pick-and-roll action into the big man. Capela is averaging a career high 17.8 points per game and shooting 65.9 percent from the field, which are well above-average numbers.

The Swiss-born center also has the second-highest Player Efficiency Rating on the Rockets out of players that have played more than one game. A player that efficient must be touching the ball often, not only to get his, but also to create for others.

Despite these numbers, Capela has only the ninth-highest usage rate on the team at 19.3 percent, lower than players like Michael Carter-Williams, Marquese Chriss and Eric Gordon. Usage rate measures the amount of times a player ends a possession via score, shot or turnover during his play. One would suspect that a player with such good efficiency and scoring would be getting the ball more, but that is not the case.

Although Capela is mainly known for his pick-and-roll offense and not his back-to-the-basket play, the Rockets could easily adjust. Head coach Mike D’Anonti should increase the percentage of pick-and-rolls, while also including more sets for Capela to get the ball in openings.

According to NBA.com, Capela takes 83.8 percent of his shots within two seconds of receiving the ball, and makes 68.3 percent of those shots. Using their brilliant guard tandem, the Rockets should try and find Capela after screens more often, where he has very good chances of getting a bucket.

Not only will this help scoring, but it could also help get the Rockets out of their shooting funk. By giving Capela more touches, it will focus the defense into the middle. By opening the floor, more shooters will be open, and this will lead to better shots being taken and more overall productivity from the rest of the team.

The Houston Rockets are also playing at the second-slowest pace in the whole league. If D’Antoni is choosing to play a slower style of offense, he should do so by getting everyone more touches, including Capela.

Chris Paul is a professional distributor, and James Harden has also showed his prowess at the point guard position as a visionary passer. Instead of taking advantage of this opportunity, the Rockets are playing a slower, isolation-based game focused around Harden. This slower game does not benefit Capela, as he is not really a back-to-the-basket type of post player.

When Harden is not shooting the basketball, the shots are going to Eric Gordon, Gary Clark or Gerald Green. While these players are good shooters and scorers, they are simply not as efficient as Capela is. Not only that, but the Rockets are just shooting at a lower clip than they were last year from 3-point distance.

It is time the Houston Rockets and Mike D’Antoni realize that they have a very talented frontcourt superstar. If they choose to use Capela more, it might actually allow them to score more points, as they are currently only 16th in points per game.

Putting more points on the board will help hide their larger and harder-to-fix defensive issues. D’Antoni-led teams have always been based on outscoring opponents, and focusing less on defensive stops. He could do the same thing with this Houston team, and be winning more basketball games, if he opened the Rockets up and gave the ball inside to Capela more often.