One of my biggest disappointments last season was J.B. Bickerstaff’s refusal to give guard/forward K.J. McDaniels a legitimate opportunity to crack the Houston Rockets’ rotation. While McDaniels certainly has his flaws (just 28% shooting on 3’s), I noted several times during the year when his defensive activities–particularly when guarding opposing point guards–altered the complexity of the game. It’s not a conclusive sample size, but McDaniels did have the highest net rating on the team at +18.9.
Watching the Oklahoma City Thunder push Golden State to the brink, I began wondering why Houston couldn’t use McDaniels in a similar manner as the Thunder did with Andre Roberson. Thus, I went back and watched all of Roberson’s made field goals from the Thunder’s May 24th victory–their last of that series–where Roberson went 7/12 from the field in scoring 17 points.
In this clip, Westbrook starts the play at the top of the key with Roberson on the 3 point line and Harrison Barnes defending Ibaka closely under the hoop. Klay isn’t concerned at all about Roberson at this point.
While Westbrook begins to make his move, Roberson begins to dart towards the hoop while Ibaka begins to leave the lane. Klay Thompson reacts to Roberson.
By now, Ibaka is out of the lane completely, while Roberson has slipped past Thompson, using Barnes as a pick.
Roberson is all alone for the hoop.
The above clip was also significant because it featured a Thunder lineup with Westbrook alone without Durant. Personnel-wise, that’s duplicable for Houston with Harden and no second star.
This set features both Durant and Westbrook together, but we’ll get to that later. For now, the play starts with Durant guarded by Curry. Roberson again is all alone on the perimeter, given little attention by Green.
Roberson begins his move, again to pick off Barnes. Green doesn’t care at all, or maybe doesn’t notice, and is inching to help on Durant. Klay Thompson right now is on both Waiters and Westbrook.
Now Roberson has completely picked off Barnes. Green is about to go help. Also notice that Westbrook is all alone for a ‘3’ if they want to go that route.
The Warriors double Durant, and Roberson is all alone at the hoop. Westbrook too is wide open.*
In this one, Westbrook starts the play with a basic pick and roll. Roberson comes out to set the pick.
Westbrook comes around the pick.
The Warriors aggressively trap Westbrook with Green, putting Roberson open in space. Iguodala is the closest man, but assigned to Durant.
Roberson rolls and Iguodala helps, leaving Durant wide open. Roberson finishes off the layup in traffic. I’m highlighting Durant for a reason here: you can’t argue that Durant’s presence as one of the greatest shooters in the world helped create this space because Iguodala actually leaves him to commit to Roberson.
[*First, before I get to my conclusion for this piece, to follow up on my point above on Westbrook: I stumbled upon this by accident and it supports my premise from last week regarding Harden and Durant. In sets where Durant was the playmaker, the Warriors were free to double Durant by daring Westbrook to beat them from the outside. You can’t take that same gamble with Harden.]
I was worried that a big factor in the efficacy of these sets was the presence of Westbrook in concert with Durant – that actually didn’t seem to the the case. Houston should be able to recreate the same highlighted conditions with Harden as the playmaker alone. They were just so uncreative offensively that instead of the cuts to the basket you saw above, someone like McDaniels just stood around on the arc where he wasn’t a threat. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy essentially: McDaniels couldn’t get playing time because he wasn’t a threat, and he wasn’t a threat because the Rockets kept him in positions where he couldn’t be a threat.
This is where I remain intrigued by D’Antoni who should be able to tap into all of the creative potential of this team’s personnel. Still, I remain cautious in my optimism. Would D’Antoni even find value in giving playing time to a defensive specialist? Shawn Marion is the closest comparison to McDaniels from D’Antoni’s track record, but even he at least shot over 30% on 3’s. McDaniels’ 28% last year makes Marion’s 2005 33% look like Steph Curry.
Overall though, the Rockets have been so primitive offensively for so long now, dating back to the end of the Rick Adelman era, its exciting to think of the possibility of new wrinkles in the offense, the type of which other teams have been employing for some time. And its only a positive if such innovation can buy playing time for the team’s best individual defender.
