“I know what to do,” Luc Mbah a Moute says, before considering whether he should really be blabbing about how to stop the Houston Rockets when they run a high pick-and-roll for James Harden. “But I’m on the team now. I can’t really tell you.”
The Rockets are 42–13 and winners of their past eight. They have the NBA’s second-best offense, just behind Golden State, with whom they are in neck-and-neck competition for the first seed in the Western Conference. Like the Warriors, Houston poses unsolvable problems for a defense. But where Golden State is a blur of transition pace, ball movement, and cutting, Houston’s offense is more languid, perfectly placing sharpshooters in the exact right place, at the exact right time, to take advantage of the opposing team’s obsession with Harden and Chris Paul.
The question Mbah a Moute claims to have an answer to is one that has vexed the 29 other NBA teams all season: How do you stop James Harden when he’s coming off a high screen? Once he does, one of several things can happen, depending on how the defense reacts.
Harden can use the screen to shake free from his man and drive to the rim. He is arguably the single toughest player to stop on the drive, so preventing him from getting in the lane is crucial. To do that, the defense has to send a second guy at Harden. The most logical defender to take that job is the man guarding the screener, who most often is Clint Capela. Do that, and Harden will almost always hit Capela on a perfectly timed roll to the rim — usually for an easy dunk. NBA defenses typically have no interest in giving up an easy lob, so they often try something else. The defending team can switch the pick-and-roll, for instance. But that’s not a good idea, either, because it invites Harden to pull the ball out and isolate against the big man.
Harden is the most dangerous isolation player in the league — among the 38 players finishing at least two possessions per game out of isolation, per NBA.com, there are only two averaging more than 1.2 points per play: Harden at 1.24 and teammate Chris Paul at 1.23.
The defense is forced to pick their poison: Do you want Harden to shoot or do you want him to pass and allow somebody else to shoot? Most teams choose the latter. That means trapping in order to get the ball out of his hands. But again, that leaves Capela wide open at the rim. To prevent that, opponents have to send help. But that presents even bigger problems, because the Rockets have arguably the deepest and strongest group of off-ball threats in the league not just this year, but in recent history.
“Other teams don’t have the personnel like we do,” Eric Gordon says. “You almost got 10 guys that are capable shooters. You have some of the best ball handlers to ever play the game. It’s just like, what can a defense do?”
The Rockets leverage those threats in a way few other teams ever have. Eight of the 10 players in Houston’s regular rotation are attempting at least three 3-point shots per game. Six of those eight players are knocking down those shots at a league-average rate or better, and none of those players is Gordon, whose numbers are a bit down from his career 38 percent 3-point average, due to an increase in defensive attention.
But the Rockets don’t just shoot a ton of 3s — they shoot deeper 3s than anybody ever has. Above the break, the NBA 3-point arc is 23 feet, 9 inches from the basket. The Rockets have attempted an NBA-high 1,599 shots at least 25 feet from the rim, per NBA.com — over 350 more than the next-closest team.
“It’s weird sometimes because we’re standing almost at half court and then you see when we watch film, sometimes there’s guys hugging up on us almost at half court,” says Ryan Anderson, perhaps the best shooter Houston has. “You see how much space [Harden] has; he can go right or left. It really just gives him so much more room and so many more options. It is weird when you play some of these teams and guys are just completely taking you out of the game, but you’re standing so far away that it’s like, ‘This is the best thing I can do for the team.’”
The Rockets’ shooters are also unique in that they don’t really move around. While most NBA coaches are preaching constant movement off the ball in order to either force the defense into mistakes or create an open look where one might not have otherwise been available, Rockets coach Mike D’Antoni tends to keep his shooters stationary, aside from when the team is running a specific action designed to get one of them open away from the ball.
“It’s always a discussion,” D’Antoni says. “‘Should we move them on the weak side? Should we keep them steady?’ We space it so wide with Ryan and Eric Gordon and other guys. We can space the court so much that sometimes if you move them, they’re not ready to receive when our other guys are ready to pass. So … most of the time, we just stay there.”
Despite playing at the NBA’s ninth-fastest pace, Rockets players have run fewer miles than any other team this season, per the Second Spectrum data on NBA.com. They also move at the league’s slowest average speed. Once they get down the floor, guys like Anderson, Gordon, Mbah a Moute, Trevor Ariza, Gerald Green, and P.J. Tucker better serve D’Antoni’s offense by standing in one spot and either drawing a defender away from the ball or forcing him to cover more ground in order to help on Harden, Paul, or Capela in the middle of the floor.
“This year has been crazy. They don’t want me to get off hardly any 3s,” Gordon says of opposing defenses. “There might be a pick-and-roll and they might leave our big open and then the guard will just stay with me. Usually, you’ll always have guys playing good team, help defense; but I don’t really get too many guys leaving me off a shot anymore.”
That’s borne out in his numbers. Last year, only 6.8 percent of Gordon’s 3-point attempts were described by NBA.com as tightly or very tightly guarded (i.e., the closest defender to his shot was less than 4 feet away). This year, that figure is up to 11.4 percent. It’s resulted in a dip in Gordon’s 3-point shooting, but a major increase in open opportunities for Capela and especially for Anderson, who has taken two 3-pointers all season that are described by NBA.com as tightly guarded. All 284 other 3s Anderson has let fly have been “open” or “wide-open,” with the closest defender at least 4 feet away from him at the time of release.
Gordon and Anderson knew what they were getting into when they signed with the Rockets before the 2016–17 season. For other players, spending more time standing still has been an adjustment.
“We got a lot of guys who can shoot and we got guys like James who can drive against anybody,” Mbah a Moute says. “And sometimes off the ball — especially for me because I’m used to this — there’s a lot of situations where you want to move or cut, but you got to give him space and make sure he can make plays and drive and get open shots, open up lanes and all that stuff. I think it depends on how teams play us. Because we got times where teams play us where we have to move, we have to cut, we have to screen for each other, all that stuff. But there’s times where we just got to space because of the way they play James. Sometimes they trap him and there’s not a lot you can do on the weak side by moving.”
Mbah a Moute is running about a tenth of a mile less per 36 minutes than he was a year ago with the Clippers, per NBA.com, and he’s finished only 12 possessions all season as a cutter, compared to 70 last year. What he’s doing far more of this season is driving the ball from the perimeter to the rim. Mbah a Moute drove only 123 times in 80 games last season in L.A.; he’s already at 112 drives in 38 games this season in Houston. Spacing out as far as possible and waiting for Harden or Paul to find him after they bend the defense has given Mbah a Moute more opportunities to attack a defender who has had to change directions twice in a matter of seconds.
And he’s taken advantage of those opportunities by getting into the paint and making the kinds of plays Doc Rivers never trusted him to make during the last two seasons in L.A. Mbah a Moute has not only nearly doubled his 3-point rate this season, his assist rate has jumped by 79.3 percent and he’s having for more success finishing in the lane.
Even though there’s only one ball, dropping Chris Freaking Paul into the middle of this well-oiled machine never made the Rockets consider making drastic changes to the way they run their offense. On the contrary, Houston has made the preseason consternation about exactly how Harden and Paul would coexist look silly; the Rockets have largely done things exactly the same way they did last season.
“We run the same plays,” D’Antoni says. “[Harden or Paul] might find a different solution, but it depends on how the defense is playing it and they’re just reacting. I think the shots [we get] are pretty similar.”
There are really only two noticeable differences: Harden and Paul each have the ball in their hands slightly less often than they’re used to, and Anderson spends a bit more time in the corners than he did a year ago, because Harden moves to the wing when he’s off the ball (Gordon or Ariza would have gone to the corner last year).
“Being in the corner, you do get opportunities if teams suck in and want to stop penetration and stuff; those are moments where you can get open corner 3s,” says Anderson. “Trevor does a really good job of figuring out ways to get to the corner and he’ll get open shots. For me, a lot of times we do that just because my man’s hugging up on me so much and it just takes my man completely out of the defense. It’s another way we can do that — getting real deep in those corners.”
The arrival of Paul, and D’Antoni’s staggering of his two best players’ minutes, means that whatever problems a defense has with the Beard, they’ll also face with CP3. Paul is nearly as dangerous off the drive as Harden, shooting 50 percent on drives to the rim and nearly matching Harden with two assists per game off the drive. He is Hardenesque in isolation, scoring 1.23 points per play to Harden’s 1.24 per play. He is maybe the best midrange shooter in NBA history. He’s taking a career-high number of 3s per game (6.8) and knocking down 40 percent of those shots. If it’s possible for someone to be an even better passer than Harden, Paul is one of the very few people on that list.
“James is one of the best one-on-one players probably that I’ve ever played with,” recent Rockets addition Gerald Green says. “The way he’s able to break down a defense — any defense — and get to the hole, draw fouls, shoot 3s from 50 feet, shoot a midrange jumper like it’s a layup, plus get and-1s from getting to the hole because he’s so strong. And Chris Paul, I mean — woo! I think ninth in all-time assists? The way he’s able to read defenses, read double-teams. The way he’s able to look defenses off and make the right pass right on the money. They always say a passer makes a shooter, so with those two guys — and you always have one on the court or the other. Sometimes both. Playing with those guys, man, it just makes everybody’s job a whole lot easier.”
Harden and Paul are both genius-level offensive maestros, and would find a way to succeed in almost any offensive ecosystem. (We’ve seen each of them do it before.) In Houston, however, they have found the perfect environment for their skill sets. The shooters are a huge part of that, not just because of the space they provide, but also because of their ability to read what Harden and Paul want to do, and where they want the shooters to be.
“I always talk to the ball handler beforehand. … We always talk about what they do on the first two possessions of the game and just see what they’re doing. It’s all about reading what they do early on in the game,” Gordon says, and it’s apparent that their early-game, offensive-coordinator-style planning works. The Rockets have what is by far the NBA’s best first-quarter offense, scoring 9.3 points more per 100 possessions than the next-closest team. “James, he likes to create so much so it’s better just to stay. With Chris, you can do both. You can move while he’s moving or you can just set up.”
When it’s all working together, it’s a beautiful symphony. The Rockets pick defenses apart with relative ease, generating more at-rim shots and 3s than any team in recent history. Combined with their top-10 defense, many are wondering whether this Houston squad might be even better than D’Antoni’s groundbreaking Phoenix Suns teams of yore. He knows his Rockets team is dangerous, and knows it can win big playing this way.
“The big ‘but’ in the Phoenix teams was they didn’t think you could win with the style that everybody’s playing right now,” D’Antoni says. “They’d go, ‘Yeah, but they’ll slow down in the playoffs. And they can’t shoot 3s. And they’re shooting too many.’ You don’t hear that anymore.”