Besides health, what issues stop us from winning the title?

A mix of all of the above.

 

Skills...Basketball skills.

 

The other team.

The refs.

 

We don't have a lot of weakness, but we do have some holes. Solved a major problem in terms on PG play-making and scoring.

Need a proven scorer to spell Harden ( hopefully Deck, but that is asking a lot )

Rebounding when Dwight on Bench ( uh oh )

Defending elite PG's ( No immediate solution, but who knows, maybe we get that in Ty )

 

Beverley? He's not going to stop them, but nobody can "stop" superstars(especially PG's), you can only hope to make them work harder for their stats.

Capela's a good rebounder so he will help when Howards on the bench.

And hopefully Lawson will be the 2nd scorer and facilitator when Hardens on the bench. There shouldn't be a minute on the court without Lawson or Harden, their minutes need to be staggered.

 

Ty helps a ton, but too many guys guys still lack 2 (or all 3) of 3 very important offensive skills (passing/shooting/dribble drive). Dekker helps there, but I'm not sure how much he'll play.

Lawson/Bev/Terry
Harden/Thornton/KJ
Ariza/Brewer/Dekker
DMo/Jones/Harrell
Dwight/Capela

that's half to most of our rotation...gotta cut that down by another player, IMO.

 

It's a bit early to say Dekker helps when we haven't seen him perform at a higher level than college. I certainly don't think he's more talented than say Ariza at the pro level. Then these guys in green like KJ, Brewer, and even beverley might be relied on more offensively than Dekker this upcoming season.

 

I don't think it really matters, since he likely won't play much. I'm just wishfully thinking he'll put in the necessary work to improve his shot and drive, much like Parsons did. I'm more worried about the front 8-10.

 

Every time we get new players we constantly think we need to improve. Its never ending. We could have LeBron, Harden, Howard, and Durant but people would still bring up that we need more capable bench or something.

The Rockets are arguably the scariest team in the league as they are right now. Not only is our starting line up one of the most balanced in elite defense and offense but we possess a bench that could compete in the East.

Harden is going to demand double teams otherwise he's going to put up great numbers, Howard is going to get his unless he's double teamed as well. That means Ty Lawson is going to have an incredibly easy time penetrating and getting to the rim or setting up Jones or Ariza for open shots and cuts. And if pressure is put back on him? Then Harden or Howard will have a field day. Its exactly how the Curry-Thompson-Green trio was so successful (except they had some of the most creative playmaking I've seen in a while)

Either way. Rockets are going to be killer this year barring injuries

 

Being in the Western Conference

 

Why are Brewer and Ariza green? Brewer can drive and pass, Ariza can shoot and pass. At the very least, Ariza shouldn't be on that list. He shoots 35% from 3pt land during the regular season and 37.5% in the playoffs. He's also 7th overall in total number of assists at the small forward position.

Personally, I believe rebounding is the key for us. Dwight is a good rebounder, Jones is okay, but the rest of the team needs to pick it up. We lost to Golden State 8 out of 9 times last year. They outrebounded us by 6 per game. I think that speaks volumes. In our 1 win we outrebounded them. Twice we outrebounded them by 1 rebound. We've got to crush teams on the boards if we want to win it all.

The good news is that we don't have to trade to get better rebounding, we just have to put in more effort.

 

This is the first year, in a long time, that we've been true contenders and actually had a set core going forward. That's why we've always needed to improve in previous years.

I've only said we needed a one player change/improvement, so i don't think that's a lot. We didn't exactly tear through the playoffs, except against an injured Dallas team. GS was clearly better. Yes we got Bev back and Dmo, traded for Ty, but look around and see what the rest of the league did. They didn't stand pat. The contenders pretty much all improved. LA, SA, MEM, CHI, OKC, GS, and Cleveland should be healthy. We have to lock up top 2 again, or we'll face a dog fight every round this year. A couple years ago we'd be looking at back to back 60 win seasons, but not with how competitive the league is now.

They can't be satisfied with being scary on paper.

 

I'm judging their skills in isolation, not as part of a system. The reason why is, when **** gets real and the offense breaks down in the playoffs, you need guys who can perform apart from the system. They need to be able to go off script, when that's the only option. I don't have a lot of confidence in Brewer or Ariza's ability to drive and finish in tough situations. I also don't think either has solid court vision. That's 2 of the 3 skills lacking. Brewer almost lacks all 3 though.


They have obviously come through for us before, so it's not impossible, but the deeper they go in the playoffs, and the longer each series is, the more they'll likely have to come through and i don't like those odds. As much as i like Brewer, i was hoping we'd replace him with someone more offensively talented than Ariza.

 

The other top 5 teams in the west

 

Spurs, Warriors and Lebron

 

Bad luck

 

Turnovers are probably the biggest problem. Lawson certainly helps in that area, but Harden is still gonna handle the ball a ton and we all remember how his final game of the season went.

Free throw shooting will be an issue since we need Dwight on the floor and he's a 40-50% foul shooter. The good news is with Smith gone, we have no major rotation player who's sub-60%(assuming Capela's late season improvement carries over), which means only Dwight will be hacked intentionally.

The other biggest factor is one outside of the Rockets' control. The Western Conference is simply loaded. You can have a really good season and still get knocked out early in the playoffs. Just ask the 2014-15 Spurs.

 

The rebounding at the 4 is terrible and really killed us against GSW.

 

This team is the most talented Rockets team I've seen since I started watching, just barely edging out the 09 team had Tmac been healthy. At this point, we have enough talent to win it all no doubt. If we have as good of injury luck as the Warriors had last year, the only thing stopping us is coaching.

There are a few teams as talented as us I would say. We aren't the clear cut most talented, but arguably we are top tier. At that point, it's up to the coach to put it together.

I'll say I have more faith in McHale than I did at this time last year. If he improves this season as much as he did from the 14 season to last year, we should be in pretty good shape.