Last week illustrated quite nicely the kind of trajectory the Houston Rockets are on.
Perhaps no team this season can claim a more impressive set of victories bunched together within six days. On Tuesday, they edged Miami 106-103. On Friday, they blew out Indiana 112-86. And on Sunday, they tipped Portland in overtime 118-113.
They even found time to sneak in an easy win over Orlando.
In the process, they have risen to third in the conference, just 2 1/2 games behind leading San Antonio and two behind Oklahoma City, whom they will play on Tuesday night.
After a kind of stop-and-go beginning that saw them at just 21-13 as the calendar flipped to 2014, Houston have gone 23-6 since January 1, a stretch that includes 15 wins in their last 17 games.
How have the Rockets flown so high? By focusing their game down low.
More than any other team in the league, Houston have perfected the art of taking efficient shots.
Of the shooting zones tracked by NBA.com, the Rockets concentrate their attempts on the space closest to the basket to 52.65 per cent of the time. They take a three-point shot from the corner (which, due to its proximity to the basket relative to other three-point shots and the fact that, well, it’s worth three points instead of two, makes it basketball’s most statistically efficient attempt) 7.68 percent of the time.
Altogether, that means the Rockets are taking their shot attempts from the most efficient spots on the floor over 60 per cent of the time, a rate that easily surpasses the rest of the NBA’s top teams.
They don’t even shoot particularly better than other teams from those spaces, but because they’re almost slavishly devoted to taking shots from those areas, they take so many more than anyone else in the NBA that it’s helped them score the third-most points per game in basketball, at 106.6.
General manager Daryl Morey is widely considered the most statistically savvy GM in the league, and head coach Kevin McHale is very much on the same page with his boss.
These trends, that is to say, are not accidents.
How do the Rockets enforce this gameplan, then? The easy answer would be to point to Dwight Howard, rediscovering his dominance as an inside player in Houston after a couple off years in Orlando and Los Angeles. He’s taken a remarkable 93.29 per cent of his 730 shot attempts this season within around five feet of the basket, making 61.67 per cent of them.
Largely because of those conversions, Howard is actually third in overall field goal percentage in the NBA, shooting 58.9 per cent.
But that wouldn’t quite paint the full picture.
Houston’s true inside dominance is built on the backs of their guards, who all possess better-than-average (arguably elite) ability to get the ball to the rim.
Chandler Parsons, who admittedly is a small forward but plays a lot like a two-guard, has gotten inside on 49.93 per cent of his 747 shot attempts this season. That’s almost on par with a traditional back-to-the-basket big man like Tim Duncan (52.88 per cent).
On top of that, James Harden has created 345 attempts inside (37.75 per cent of his 914 total shots), Jeremy Lin has taken 216 (44.54 per cent of 485) and Patrick Beverley has taken 133 (34.91 per cent of 381).
Add in Terrence Jones’ prolific inside scoring (shooting 61.08 per cent on 388 attempts – over 73 per cent of his total shots) and you have a Rockets team that has packed the paint more than any other in the NBA.
And while shooting only a roughly average 57.99 per cent as a team from the area closest to the basket, Houston are proving you can build one of the NBA’s most prolific offences with quantity of quality.
With a stretch this week that includes three road games at Oklahoma City, then Chicago, then Miami, Houston have a chance to continue their ascent. Perhaps as high as the top of the West.
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