Clippers Sail Past Houston, 133-113, Awaken Rockets’ Identity Crisis
The Los Angeles Clippers did what they wanted, when they wanted, pretty much all night on Friday at Toyota Center as they beat down a Harden-less Rockets team by 20 points in Houston. Former Rocket Montrezl Harrell, who was part of the trade to bring Chris Paul to Houston, scored a career high 30 points (many of them wide-open dunks) against his former team in a game where the Rockets had no answer for Harrell inside, or anyone on the Clippers for that matter. Los Angeles’ bench alone scored a monstrous 85 points on a Rockets defense, that at best, seemed to be staring into space, searching for answers to a defensive start that is slowly becoming, historically, the worst in NBA history. The effective switch-everything defense on screens from a year ago seems to be gone, and opponents seemed to be one step ahead of the Rockets’ attempted switches on the defensive end of the floor. Maybe Trevor Ariza’s loss really WAS as impactful as some of us dreaded it might be. The lack of communication on the defensive end is glaringly obvious. The Rockets seem to be lost on every possession as they give up layup after layup, dunk after dunk, and one wide-open shot after another to their opponents. True, Houston is still dealing with injures to the likes of MVP James Harden, James Ennis, Nene, and others. However, this Rockets team is deep enough and was constructed to beat bad teams like the Clippers at home without their MVP, not get blown away by 20. Carmelo Anthony finally had a good game, but it required garbage time against inferior competition for Melo to show he can still be an effective contributor in the NBA. The injuries, new pieces, and the overlooked Jeff Bzdelik’s absence as the defensive coordinator all factor into why the Rockets are 1-4 when they haven’t even played a contender yet. A Houston Rockets team whose identity was so clear and visible to every player in the D’Antoni system last year seems to have vanished. The offense will come. The red flag in the system is the defensive end of the floor, where Ariza’s loss in free agency is shining brighter than the sun itself. There’s a quote from Ted Kotcheff’s seminal, criminally overlooked masterpiece, Wake In Fright, about a man who loses his self-identity after succumbing to a society reeling under the malign influence of its own basest impulses, that resonates when thinking of this Rockets team and the team everyone is gunning for, the Golden State Warriors. “We break the rules. But we know more about ourselves than most people.” The Warriors, in traditional basketball fans eyes, have “broken the rules” by being able to acquire five sure-fire future Hall-of-Famers in their PRIME, while no one else in the league can summon more than two. Despite this “breaking of rules”, the Warriors know and understand their identity as a team. That is never a question. I’m the LAST person who would ever root for the Warriors, but even I can admit they have the best chemistry in basketball and their identity is undeniably set in stone. The Rockets, on the other hand, have lost their identity completely, and despite keeping the competitive balance in the NBA even, they need to look in the mirror and figure out who they are as a team. The defensive switches are killing Houston on what seems like every play, and without improved communication this problem will only plunge the Rockets into a deeper early-season hole. Only 5 games into the season is still early, but if this Rockets team continues to sleep through games, when they eventually wake, it could be a frightening circumstance that may be too late to save the season. The schedule doesn’t get any easier as the Portland Trailblazers, another Western Conference playoff team from last year, rolls into town on Tuesday night. Sometimes a glaring issue isn’t complex, it’s just obvious. The Rockets obviously need to start playing better, focus on getting back to the basics of help defense, or hope a player from another city comes catering to the team’s most essential needs… or it could be a long, frightful season for the Rockets and their fans.