By: Paul McGuire
Well, the Houston Rockets are in the playoffs.
Let us not forget how at the beginning of the season, Houston was a popular dark-horse pick…to miss the playoffs altogether, especially if either Harden or Howard got hurt. Yet here they are, just a half-game from the second seed in the Western Conference.
But the Rockets have not reached their potential. There were glimpses of it tonight with Dwight, as Houston just reached another level while he was on the court. Houston did play well enough tonight that Kevin McHale sent out human victory cigar K.J. McDaniels with two minutes left. But I have no doubt that if Howard could play like normal, this game would have been over by the start of the fourth quarter.
It was not just the defense, though that was good as always. Howard mentioned to Sports Illustrated about how he wanted to take a smaller role on the offensive end and “make the ultimate sacrifice.” That was on display tonight. Howard made 8 shots. All of them were dunks. None of them came from Howard’s attempts to post up. They were passes received from Harden, Josh Smith, and Pablo Prigioni and then thrown down with all of Howard’s force and athleticism.
Practically every NBA website has written at some point about how Howard should stop trying to produce in the post and focus on playing defense and grabbing lobs. That was what happened tonight and it was great to watch.
The result tonight was that for three quarters and much of the fourth, Houston used Howard to grab a big lead over the Timberwolves. Then Howard went out, Dorsey came in, and Minnesota’s offense would shrink the lead for the rest of the quarter. Andrew Wiggins in particular drew fouls like he was Harden tonight, finishing with 31 points after scoring 30 against Houston earlier this season.
Oh, and the three-pointers were fun too. This injured Wolves team which only suited up eight players tonight do not have any perimeter defenders aside from Andrew Wiggins. So all of the Rockets starters went off and shot over 50 percent of their long-range shots. Even Josh Smith went 3-5 tonight.
The bench on the other hand did struggle to shoot. Brewer is inconsistent and that just is how he is, but Prigioni is problematic. When Red94 discussed Prigioni in our post-trade deadline roundtable, Richard Li pointed out that while Prigioni was a career 41 percent shooter from three, it was distorted by how rarely he actually shot them.
Now Prigioni is hitting just 18 percent as a Rocket, going 1-6 tonight. And if that was not bad enough, the Minnesota defenders were backing off Prigioni to cover the other players. You know Prigioni is in a slump when defenders pay more attention to Josh Smith’s three-pointers. Bill Worrell said that Prigioni is looking to adjust, and that is all Houston fans can hope for.
And speaking of Smith. Smith was Root Sport’s Player of the Game as he fell one rebound shy of a triple-double. I do not care about triple doubles (a reason I am apoplectic about the idea of Russell Westbrook stealing the MVP trophy). They are a cute quirk of the box score and nothing more. And while Smith had 11 assists and had good effort on the glass and defensive end, I remain concerned about how he tries to thread the needle too often. 11 assists to 6 turnovers is not terrible from an assist to turnover standpoint, but it is not great and Houston needs to worry about how they will fix their turnover problem. While I understand how Houston needs multiple ball handlers especially without Beverley, it remains a problem.
The Rockets are close to that second seed and a potential playoff trip against a vulnerable Mavericks squad. But they have two tough road games up next. The Wizards play defense, and the last time Houston won in Toronto, Rafer Alston was the starting point guard. Both the Grizzlies and the Rockets will face just three sub-.500 opponents over the rest of the season.
