The Houston Rockets continued their season of streaks with an action packed week which saw them play five games, losing the first three and then winning the final two. The Rockets lost a tough one to the Milwaukee Bucks on the road, 128-119, and then traveled to Cleveland the very next night to lose a nail-biter in overtime to the Cleveland Cavaliers, 135-130. They then came home and fell again to the Atlanta Hawks at Toyota Center, 134-127. On Friday, they hosted a completely undermanned Dallas Mavericks team playing without Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving, pummeling them 122-96, taking leads of over 30 at certain points. Then on Saturday, the Rockets traveled to New Orleans and beat a Pelicans team at full health (playing with Zion Williamson), 106-104, in what was one of the team’s most impressive victories of the season.
As of Sunday night, the Rockets occupied eighth place in the packed Western Conference playoff picture, sitting at 15-12 with a .556 winning percentage, which puts them on pace to win an astonishing 46 games this season. They are projected to have the sixth easiest schedule in the league the rest of the way and the second easiest amongst Western Conference teams.
After an up and down week, the Rockets are now at eighth in the league in net rating at +3.5, back up to second in defense with a defensive rating of 109.5 (behind only Minnesota), and 21st in offense with an offensive rating of 113.0. This is very much a defensive team with offensive struggles.
Christmas week does not get any easier as the Rockets host the top two offensive teams in basketball in the Indiana Pacers and Philadelphia 76ers. They also take on the struggling Phoenix Suns who, at 14-14, have not been able to live up to the expectations they had set after a busy offseason. The biggest test of the week will be how Rockets center Alperen Sengun deals with Joel Embiid, the league’s reigning MVP.
Frontcourt Focus
The Rockets kicked off their rebuild in 2021 expecting to build their team around the talents of young backcourt prospects Kevin Porter Jr., acquired in a trade from Cleveland, and Jalen Green, selected using the second overall pick in the 2022 draft. Much of the developmental emphasis was placed upon these two players over the past two seasons with, ironically, little now to show for it. Porter was traded to the Oklahoma City Thunder this offseason in what was a salary dump after the guard faced criminal charges for a domestic violence incident. And Green has been far and away the team’s least impactful regular rotation player, sporting a net negative on-court rating for all of the year.
Instead, it’s been a pair of frontcourt prospects who have anchored this season’s surprising 15-12 turnaround. Sengun, in his third year, and still just 21 years old, has been the team’s best offensive player and focal point on offense. And 2022 third overall pick, power forward Jabari Smith Jr. has come on emphatically of late, on both sides of the ball.
Sengun is averaging 20.4 points, 9.2 rebounds, and 5.2 assists per game on 53.3% shooting from the floor. He carried the Rockets down the stretch in Saturday’s win over the Pelicans, exploding for 37 points, 11 rebounds, and six assists. This was on the heels of a 22 and 15 performance against Dallas which saw him rack up 20 points and 10 rebounds in the first half against the undersized Mavericks.
After a rough October, Smith is now averaging 14 points and 8.9 rebounds per game on 49.8% shooting from the floor and 38.7% on 3s. He’s been on a tear of late, averaging 27 points, 10.7 rebounds, and 1.7 blocks per game over his last three games, shooting 63.4% from the floor and 60% on five three point attempts per game.
The pair is making for quite the 1-2 punch up front with their complementary skillsets on full display. If this holds, and there is no reason to believe it won’t, the team appears to be set at the power forward and center spots for the future, with Sengun extension eligible this upcoming summer and Smith the very next summer.