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This game felt like the Rockets season in microcosm. Amen Thompson returned from being out in the previous game, and the Rockets traveled to Orlando for the second game of a back to back. Orlando was at home, and last played Tuesday in Los Angeles. After a game of beating the woeful Kings easily with a more spacing friendly lineup, the Rockets were back to the usual, with Amen as the point guard.
The Rockets size and athleticism do them much less good against a team like Orlando. The Magic can counter the Rockets size and, mostly, athleticism at every position. Like the Rockets, the Magic struggle with offensive execution, and the addition of a single good shooter, Desmond Bane, hasn’t fixed the problem. Like the Rockets, great things were expected of the Magic this season, with the addition of Bane, similar to the Rockets with Durant. Some might have favored the Magic’s young talent over that on the Rockets, in the preseason. Again, like the Rockets, that talent has somewhat duplicative skill sets, and most of them require getting into the paint to be most effective.
Like the Rockets, a certain inflexibility of ideas regarding how to play, and further, a lack of shooting and spacing beyond Desmond Bane, has held Orlando back, even when healthy. Also similar to the Rockets, injuries have bent the initial concept of the team out of shape this season. Both are teams with a defense first (last and only?) identity, and neither has done much to address that issue, beyond hoping a new addition will fix it, while doing everything else much as before.
You’re probably wondering about the game, I don’t blame you. I very much believe the mirror image conceit is important in what follows.
The Old Look Rockets did not exactly light up the Orlando Magic with their Amen, Tari, Durant, Jabari, Sengun lineup. Considering potential spacing and general offense issues, one might look at this lineup and think “Wow, that’s all forwards, and one center. Sure, you can SAY Amen and Tari are guards, but they aren’t. Only Durant is a shooter anyone must respect and must go out to guard. Even so, Durant prefers to operate in the paint mostly. And Sengun never gets a pass made to him in the paint. He has to get to the rim somehow, from the 3pt line, every time. You know what I’d do? What everyone else does, harass Durant and pack the paint.”
Guess what? That’s what Orlando did. It worked. The Rockets lost the first quarter 22-29, while looking, frankly, dreadful on offense. Sure, it’s bad to surrender points, but it’s worse to surrender them and not score, to boot. It was very much a lather, rinse, repeat, no movement, spacing for a drive and kick that rarely happens, to supposed shooters nobody comes out to guard.
So, in true Udokan fashion, the Rockets tightened up on defense. And they somehow got even worse on offense. Orlando only scored 24 points. That’s great defense. The Rockets? They scored 21. That is simply losing NBA offense.
Kevin Durant looked, frankly, tired, maybe old, and why not? He’s a 37 year old player, playing big minutes routinely on the second night of a B2B on the road. Sengun couldn’t operate, the shooters you’d want to take 3pt shots weren’t taking them. Orlando wasn’t shooting threes at a great rate at that point, but they were taking, at one point, three times as many.
The score at halftime was a Wayback Machine 54-43. The Rockets were On Pace to score 86 points. That’s a losing score most nights in 1994. The battle of inept offenses continued, until 5:18 remaining in the 3rd quarter, with Orlando leading 76-57. What follows next was a strong an argument for shooting, for spacing, for point guard play, basically for the idea of offense in basketball, as I’ve ever seen. Of course the Rockets had to play good defense to make that happen, but somehow, despite the presence of Reed Sheppard, Kevin Durant and Clint Capela, that’s exactly what they did.
At 5:18 remaining, Reed Sheppard came in for Amen Thompson. Clint Capela came in for Alperen Sengun. Tari Eason stayed in the game, and we saw, finally, Josh Okogie take the place of Dorian Finney-Smith (and Jabari Smith).
The Rockets would go on the score the next 21 points. In roughly 4 minutes. Kevin Durant, Reed Sheppard, and Josh Okogie would score all those points, off a far better spaced Rockets offense. Most of those points, unlike earlier, were assisted. Most of them by Sheppard.
At 1:15 remaining in the third, with the Rockets taking a 78-76 lead, the Magic finally scored again. After that it would be a back and forth affair. Durant and a returning Sengun lead the Rockets down the stretch against a Magic team that suddenly found shooting with deadline acquisition Jevon Carter and Desmond Bane, who was amazing tonight. Jabari Smith returned, and with 9 minutes remaining, took, and made, his first three point attempt of the game. Mostly though it was the Rockets playing great defense, an energized Durant splashing tough shots, and finally, Reed Sheppard making two big threes in the last two minutes. Also credit to Josh Okogie. The Rockets finally put him on Desmond Bane, and he helped close him down. Okogie has been everything we hoped DFS would be, including making 3pt shots. It’s baffling he hasn’t played much lately.
I really can’t think of a better example of a game to emphasize the points I’ve been trying to make here. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that spacing, provided by two shooters defenses must respect, and point guard play turned this game, and brought the Rockets up to NBA average scoring in a bit less than a quarter and a half. Remember, they were on a pace to score 86 points, playing The Ime Way.
The Rockets basically have to play perfect defense to win the Ime Way. Why not play very good defense, and good offense, instead of requiring perfection? It might look like the Magic had a scoring outburst, but again, they were under NBA average. The Rockets really didn’t run an offense per se, the spacing just gave players like Durant, like Sengun, the space to be their best. It gave players like Okogie and Smith looks they can make.
Life doesn’t have to be as hard as it has been for the Rockets. Why does it seem like they only play reasonable offense when they have almost no other option?
Tonight KD played a real Game of Two Halves. In the end he scored 40 points, on 14-28 shooting. He was 2 for 10 from three point range, and that’s where maybe we saw tired legs. He hardly seemed to miss late, and showed why he was one of the greats of all time. But late game? Durant benefited from spacing, and from passing to him. The difference between a swarmed, harassed, KD, and one with room to work was enormous.
Sheppard scored 20 points on 7-11 shooting, in 31 minutes. He added 3 boards, 4 assists, 2 steal, 2 blocks, against a turnover. He’s far perfect, he’s still essentially a 21 year old rookie PG in terms of minutes. Judging him like an established veteran is lunacy. But he is simply the only player on the roster that can provide what they need. The only other player, besides Durant, to give them any shooting gravity, to take defenses out of their packline defense, essentially, and give both Alpie and KD a bit of room to operate.
Maybe it’s also time to stop being stubborn about lineups that cannot provide space to operate for Rockets players on offense? Are they THAT much better defensively? Or at all? The scoring for Orlando seemed about the same either way. What changed was the Rockets offense.
The difference between the Reed lineup late, and everything before it, was that stark. It seems blasphemous to suggest that Amen maybe shouldn’t be on the court in certain situations, but that’s exactly what’s happening to his brother in Detroit. It’s very difficult to simply defend your way to a comeback. Scoring is required. You just can’t have a player in a guard role that just can’t shoot it, combined with a non shooting center, and two other offensive players that simply haven’t earned the respect of defenses, for good reason. It just doesn’t work in the pace and space, three point shooting, modern NBA.
You may have another viewpoint, and this is just one game, but the Rockets didn’t even run some sort of offense late. It was the same old motionless, hanging around the 3pt line stuff, just with a PG who could shoot it, and one defenses must respect for that shooting.