Checking in on the Rockets’ latest basketball re-invention

The Houston Rockets are playing basketball without a center. The newest small-ball revolution is working.

The Houston Rockets are, for the second time in a few short years, redefining how the game of NBA basketball is played. Over the past few years, James Harden pushed the boundaries of the pull-up jumper. Now, the Houston Rockets have eschewed the big man position entirely. As a result, Houston’s small-ball lineup is taking the NBA by storm.

The Houston Rockets are 6-2 since the NBA trade deadline on Feb. 6 with the third-best net rating in the league. They traded away the only center on the roster who saw real playing time, Clint Capela, in exchange for a wing in Robert Covington. Since the deadline, the Rockets have leaned into their strengths while allowing their weaknesses room to exist and even grow. No team is perfect at everything. The Rockets have gambled that their strengths are worth much more in the balance.

Let’s start with the obvious. No player above the height of 6-foot-7 is an important part of Houston’s rotation. Though P.J. Tucker with his width and Covington with his length are excellent paint defenders, the Rockets’ lack of height could seemingly offer opposing teams a short-cut to scoring: just post up.

But if you actually look at the numbers, no big man has truly exploded against the Rockets without Capela. Here are the scoring performances of each team’s best-scoring big that Houston has played since Feb. 6.

Note that while most opponents’ bigs have had efficient games against Houston, they haven’t dramatically outperformed their season averages. Neither have they taken too many more shots. It’s possible that teams simply haven’t punished Houston with enough post-ups. When the Rockets face the Philadelphia 76ers and Joel Embiid on March 31, perhaps Embiid will score 50 points. But it’s more likely that the Rockets will be fine. After all, Davis was good in Houston’s matchup against the Lakers, but he was not good enough to tilt the tides in favor of the Lakers.

Posting up is easier said than done against the Rockets. Houston’s defenders three-quarter the post, knowing that help from the backside will steal any attempt at a lob over the top. They are excellent at cheating into the post from the weak-side, deterring any entry pass and increasing the chances of a turnover. Note this GIF, which is frozen at the beginning to show how Houston packs the paint by cheating far off of non-threatening shooters. The Rockets then double-team Davis when he rolls into the paint without the ball. Austin Rivers trails until Covington picks up on the other side of the pain. The Rockets make an entry pass at any point in the cut difficult and contested, and Covington eventually tips it away.

Even when opponents try to set screens to free bigs for post position, Covington is spectacular at breaking the seal and beating his opponents to the ball. He has sticky hands and seemingly always comes up with the ball on 50-50 passes, even against much larger and stronger men.

Trying to pass into the paint against Houston is always a risk because they crowd it so well.

In general, the Rockets know that they need to contest all entry passes. Small-ball only works if you are the aggressor rather than letting the offense dictate what will happen. Playing conservatively on defense is death for the Rockets; they are the anti-Milwaukee Bucks. They need to attack the ball before it touches the paint. Houston has done the math; if opponents try to post up every time, and even shoot well when they get shots up, but turn the ball over quite a bit as well, that constitutes a win for the Rockets.

If the ball does get to the paint, the Rockets know that they need to collapse instead of letting opponents isolate in the post. They’d rather over-rotate than not be ready to help. The Rockets are actually quite good at protecting the rim against bigs, despite not playing any of their own. The team is infinitely switchable, with all of their top-six in Harden, Covington, Eric Gordon, Westbrook, Tucker, and Danuel House Jr. as capable defending in the post as on the perimeter. The Rockets switch everything, always remaining at home, and collapsing to help in the paint, trusting all five players — none of whom are ever slow-footed bigs — will be fast enough to recover to the perimeter if necessary.

Harden and Gordon especially are fantastic defending against post-ups, both 80th-percentile or above because of their strength and balance. Houston’s best lineups switch every action with every player, letting anyone defend point guards and centers. Stopping bigs isn’t just about individuals, though. It is on primary defenders to hold their ground, but help will come. Small-ball means everyone has to protect the rim, sometimes all at once. Covington and company swarm relentlessly, and they are fantastic at challenging shots before they even leave shooters’ hands. Such blocks below the rim require quick hands and perfect timing.

Of course, not everything is perfect with Houston’s defense. Since the deadline, the Rockets boast only the league’s 12th-best defense. By rebounding percentage, they are the single worst rebounding team in the league since the deadline. Correspondingly, in eight games since the deadline, they’ve been outscored in the paint in seven. That weakness hasn’t mattered as much as one might think. In fact, their defensive rating of 109.7 since Feb. 6 is almost the same as 109.6 before that date. The reason is because Houston wasn’t great at defending the paint even with Capela. Houston knew it couldn’t fix those issues without sacrificing the identity that made it a powerhouse. So they leaned into small-ball. Houston already was a middling rebounding team, and teams shot above an expected rate in the paint. Now, opponents may get more of their own misses against the Rockets. But they also turn the ball over more, and they shoot a little worse from deep.

The exchange is about even.

Instead, as Houston’s defense hasn’t lost a step despite playing so small, the offense has become as effortlessly dominant as skinny anime characters battling muscle-bound monsters. Without any real center on the roster, Houston no longer sets proper ball screens with a big for a guard. As a result, opponents can’t double-team Harden without sending the second defender from very far away. Harden’s pull-up 3-point shooting has skyrocketed from 35.6 percent before Feb. 6 to 41.5 percent since.

Harden isn’t the only player enjoying extra space on the floor. Westbrook, playing in Houston’s true five-out system, has morphed once again into one of the most dominant players in the league. He’s been on a heater since mid-December, but his dominant scoring games now correspond better to Houston actually winning. Houston’s embrace of small-ball has made Westbrook appear much like Giannis Antetokounmpo at times. Westbrook’s 3-point attempts are down dramatically, and his efficiency is up. Since Feb. 6, he’s averaging 34.0 points per game on 56.9 percent shooting from the field.

More importantly, since Feb. 6, Houston has a net rating of 18.1 with Westbrook on the floor and -2.0 with him off. The Rockets had a higher net rating with him off the floor before Feb. 6. Westbrook, more than anyone, has benefited from Houston’s newest revolution; he has gone from a liability to indispensable.

The five-out system has allowed Westbrook to rampage to the rim at will. He attempted 46.6 percent of his shots at the rim before the trade, and that has risen to 52.9 percent. Oh yeah, and now he’s finishing an absurd 65.4 percent of shots since the trade. From where is the help supposed to come?

When teams trap Harden — which is transparent without Houston setting ball screens — or collapse to prevent Westbrook drives, that leaves the rest of the roster open to fire from deep. Since the trade, the non-Hardens on the team are shooting 40.1 percent from deep. The Rockets never play a non-shooter, which is a synonym for someone who can be helped off of. Role players in Houston have always been free to shoot, but as a result of playing five-out, they now have more space even if they don’t require much at all.

Across the entire season, the Rockets have thrown the fewest passes per game of any team. They don’t have superfluous body or ball movement, which means off-ball players mostly sit stationary, waiting. That is actually advantageous. If teams help or double away from players who aren’t moving, Harden and Westbrook have free sightlines to find open players. And they’ll always be in advantageous positions because they aren’t moving from those spots. Because Harden and Westbrook can beat individual defenders at will, defenses have to move, even if the offense doesn’t. Help is death, and not helping is death. Houston has found the perfect offensive rotation to compliment the perfect offensive player in Harden; lineups with Covington and Harden are scoring 122.8 points per 100 possessions, which is in the 99th percentile league-wide. The fit between Harden and Westbrook was always awkward until Covington came around.

As a result, Houston’s offensive rating of 117.2 since Feb. 6 is higher than any team’s over the full season. Defenses have not found an answer for this newest evolution of small-ball.

They have the highest shot quality of any team since Feb. 6. They have increased their already-league-leading rate of creating corner triples. This Houston offense has taken a formula that already worked well and supercharged it. Defenses have found no counter, and Houston has already played phenomenal defensive teams in Utah (twice), the Los Angeles Lakers, and Boston.

Paradoxically, losing Clint Capela, Harden’s premier lob threat, has shifted the identity of the team away from solely Harden. The team used to be defined by his indefatigable scoring ability. (Of course, that still remains.) But Harden’s scoring was perhaps the only unique aspect of the team, the star around which the rest of the system orbited. Now the team is at least partially defined by Covington’s defensive versatility, by Westbrook’s irresistible driving talent.

Houston’s diffusion of identity does not mean that the Rockets can be carried by anyone other than James Harden. The team since acquiring Covington has a negative net rating with Harden off the floor. For all the changes, the team will only go as far as Harden takes them. But the infusion of purpose, the complete reliance on small-ball, at least gives Harden more opportunity to succeed. The Rockets shrink the floor on the defensive end and expand it offensively. That’s the ideal environment for Harden to work, and the Rockets finally have the correct assortment of players to both define those parameters of the court and to take advantage of them. Westbrook is thriving. Covington is indispensable. But Harden remains the best player and linchpin.

The Rockets have changed the game of basketball once again. They have completely eschewed height, preferring instead skill, shooting, speed, and intelligence. There are others, but Houston’s is one possible logical endpoint of the small-ball revolution. If Harden can finally break through in the playoffs, it will likely determine whether Houston’s new approach will be mimicked across the league or forgotten as a strange fad unique to this season.