By: Paul McGuire
The Portland Trail Blazers have four players at 6’11’’ or taller.
The Houston Rockets without Dwight Howard have one.
Tonight’s game can be pretty much summed up with those two sentences. If Houston wants to win basketball games while getting dominated in the paint as badly as they did tonight, they pretty much need a perfect game from everyone. Instead, they got a perfect game from James Harden, Josh Smith…and no one else.
Well, James Harden seems to be close enough to “everyone” on the Rockets offense these days.
There were two periods in tonight’s game which sealed Houston’s fate. The second quarter, where Portland opened up a 16 point lead, and the early fourth quarter, when Meyers Leonard scored 9 straight points to give Portland the lead for good( yes, seriously). In both stretches, the same problem showed up – Portland finished in the paint while Houston stagnated offensively and blew easy shots left and right.
It would be easy to say that if Houston had made a few more layups which they should have made tonight, the result might have been different. But the reality was that Houston struggled to stop any of Portland’s big men all night long. Meyers Leonard’s fourth quarter scoring run could be explained by the fact that McHale chose to run a Terry-Harden-Ariza-Brewer-Motiejunas lineup, though this beggars the question of why McHale chose to use such a lineup against the bigger Blazers in the first place. In the second quarter, Lamarcus Aldridge and Chris Kaman killed the Rockets in the post. I had hoped that Smith might be able to slow down Aldridge in the post tonight, but the results were disappointing. Houston had better success stopping Aldridge in the second half by swarming him in the paint and keeping one player ready for the double. They may need to rely on that strategy again when they face the Blazers in March.
In addition to being unable to stop Portland’s big men, both Terrence Jones and Motiejunas had poor offensive nights. But there is one aspect of Motiejunas’s play which can be interpreted as a positive – his free throws. Obviously, hitting just one of seven free throws is unacceptable. But the good news is that Motiejunas drew seven free throws at all, the most he’s had in a month. If there is a downside with Motiejunas’s hook shots and tricky moves, it is that he does not draw many free throws for someone who bangs in the post as much as he does. Motiejunas’s Free Throw Rate is at a mere .240 – lower than the career average of Andrea Bargnani and lower than Stephen Curry this year, who as we all know prefers three-pointers. While this was Motiejunas’s worst game in some time, this could be a small victory if he can learn how to get fouled more often from tonight.
Oh, and Beverley. I have hounded Beverley quite a bit for his poor play this season, but tonight was the shining jewel of suck - 2 points, 1 assist, 2 turnovers, and 5 fouls. Joey Dorsey did a better job than Beverley in filling up the boxscore tonight, and Dorsey played better defense on Portland’s big men than Beverley did on Lillard or backup guard C.J. McCollum. Those two guards combined to score 35 points on 17 shots. At this point, all that can be said is that Beverley currently is awful. He has shot 40 percent or less in all of his last eight games, 10 out of his last 11, and his defense is gone. I have not been particularly enthused about Isaiah Canaan, and his 0-6 outing against Detroit did not help; but heck, maybe it is time for Canaan Ball.
The Rockets are facing an upcoming stretch from hell, with 8 of their next 10 games against over .500 teams. They are going to need to figure out how to handle opposing big men without Howard. Phoenix, their next opponent, does not have any true bangers; but Brandan Wright always gave Houston fits in his days with the Mavericks. Then there are the Clippers with Blake Griffin and the Mavericks with Nowitzki before the All-Star Game. We now know that Howard may be out for even longer, around 6 to 8 weeks. The All-Star Break will be critical as Houston tries to figure out their new rotations and defensive strategies.
