If I ever meet you, I'll buy you a beer!
By: Rahat Huq
[table id=20 /]
At the time of writing, the Houston Rockets are playing at the fourth fastest pace in the NBA at 102.07. That wasn't always the case. I remembered diving into the numbers early on and finding that the team was middle of the pack - at the beginning of the season, while the Rockets were playing well, they weren't exactly Seven Seconds or Less. I've compiled the team's week by week pace in the chart above. Note that the corresponding pace and rankings are not cumulative. That is to say, the pace and rank for each week is just for the two to four games played that week. Such an approach gives us a clearer understanding of impacting variables than what would have been provided by the cumulative scores. And of course, as a whole, despite starting the season where they did, the Rockets are now at fourth.
From my perspective, the three most distinctive events of the Rockets' season were the return of Patrick Beverley from injury, the loss of Clint Capela to injury, and the acquisition of Lou Williams. Beverley returned to the lineup on 11/17 playing 25 minutes against the Blazers. He cracked the 30 minute mark on 11/23 against the Raptors. The week of 11/27 was when Houston's pace began to increase comparatively.
Capela missed games spanning from 12/20 to 1/15 and after playing just nine minutes in his return, has been consistent in his playing time since 1/20.
Lou Williams was acquired on 2/23.
If looking to draw conclusions, losing Capela was a mixed bag. They played fast some weeks, but at a moderate pace in others, while he was gone. Beverley's return didn't immediately correlate with Houston's uptick in pace, as I had theorized a priori, but one could surmise that as he settled in, and as Tyler Ennis settled out, the Rockets' metamorphosis into what they currently are got underway. And since getting Williams, the Rockets have not looked back at all, consistently playing amongst the fastest paces in the league every week.
