A little better all the time. (It couldn’t get no worse)
Like the song says, it’s getting better a little bit at a time, game by game, quarter by quarter. Tonight, in Dallas against the surprisingly spry Mavericks, the Houston Rockets only crumbled for about a five minute period. In fact, they even recovered after that slump and came back to win the game, and played fairly well while doing it. The Rockets look like they decided that they didn’t want to find out how much worse their season could get, or maybe they look like they used the first month of the season as a training camp. Either way, this is one they can feel good about.
The best news of all may be some bad news from earlier in the day: Dwight Howard sat out the game. He’s cleared for back to back games, but the doctors still haven’t approved him for five games in seven nights, and tomorrow will be the fifth game on that seventh night. The decision was made (by whom? Dwight? The coaching staff? Probably a bit of both, but as always the Rockets organization is opaque) to sit Howard against the Mavs and run him against the Sacramento Kings. That was, so far, the correct decision. It was a good choice on paper, too. The Mavs don’t have a powerful inside presence like the Kings do in DeMarcus Cousins. Now Dwight will be as fresh as possible to take on a feisty if inconsistent Kings team.
James Harden was, as always, the engine that powers the Houston offense. His 25 points on 23 shots was pretty solid considering that he went 1-6 on threes (when oh when will this team’s shooting even out?) and only shot 5 free throws. The refs generally swallowed their whistles in that game, something which Harden has trouble with at times. Tonight, he responded by flirting hot and heavy with a triple double, grabbing 8 rebounds and dishing 9 dimes in a very nice offensive performance. Other players moved off the ball, and they hit shots when he passed and everything! It was like basketball!
His defense, however, is still mostly atrocious, despite a few good possessions on Dirk Nowitzki late. He pretty obviously is trying to look like he’s defending more than actually defending most of the time. It’s about as convincing as when you look over at your coworker and they close a browser to reveal a very very tough looking spreadsheet that, huh, has looked exactly the same every time you peek over there. I can understand why NBA ball has been frustrating for Harden this season so far and why basically everything else in his life is more attractive. Unfortunately for him, he built a pretty large pile of fame on fortune on top of that foundation, so sorry, buddy, but you need to work on that spreadsheet for a while. Hopefully with some wins, he will continue to improve his effort.
Speaking of effort, Trevor Ariza gave all of it. We’re back to the “play Ariza 39 minutes a game because nobody else can correctly defend on the wing” Rockets of last year. That sounds like a lot of minutes, and it seems like it’s going to be unsustainable and a real problem later, but he also did it for an entire season last year, so who knows? Preferably Corey Brewer will metamorphose back into an NBA player, but let’s not hold out breaths. Trevor, however, must have held his breath while shooting free throws, because he went 0-4 on the night and those misses were all important crunch time free throws. He still ended up with 18 points on 7-10 shooting, including 4-7 from deep, so that’s a comparatively minor complaint, but missed free throws lose games.
basically, everyone played between decent to well, and Clint Capela’s 0-5 from the field was the only jarring stat. Capela played very well otherwise, defending with vigor, blocking a couple shots and grabbing 10 boards. Ty Lawson messed around and looked like a legit player. He only ended up with 8 points (on 8 shots), a rebound, and assist and a steal in 20 minutes, but he had a few very nice moments and generally seems to be following the exact same sputtering startup trajectory as the team, which is something that seems both deeply comforting for the future and deeply concerning regarding the recent past. The hope has to be that he will truly assimilate into the team soon, and the Rockets will have a myriad of creation options.
Oh, and Donatas Motiejunas is due to play a game any time now.
Ever since that brush with eternal damnation against the Philadelphia 76ers, the Rockets have looked, at the very worst, resigned to their fate of having to work for wins. It isn’t back up to “good” yet, but it’s a lot better than “ten foot brick of walrus lard on fire,” so that’s an improvement! For the first time all season, head coach J.B. Bickerstaff (Is it wrong that I’ve wanted to type that for a long time?) and his team have something to be hopeful about. I’ve got to admit, it’s getting better.
