This thread was originally posted on a Chinese basketball forum called Hoopchina and I am just doing the translation. https://bbs.hupu.com/24337248.html After losing to the Spurs, the Rockets have scored under 90 points for 2 consecutive games and the offensive rating this season has fallen to the fourth-lowest in the league. So, what happened to the Rockets offense? Let's take a look at today's game to explain the problems that the Rockets are facing this season. The starting lineup for the Rockets is Paul, Harden, Ennis, Tucker and Capela. Whenever Harden has the ball, the defenders are more willing to help on Harden's drives, rather than guarding Ennis and Tucker on the perimeter. A lot of people are saying other team have figured the Rockets out, but this is not the biggest reason. The biggest reason is that the current personnel of the Rockets has allowed other teams to help on Harden more aggressively. I will give you a set of statistics to prove my point: The poor spacing also affected Capela. His percentage of shot attempts that are 0-3 feet from the basket dropped from 80.2% last season to 70.9% this season. The true shooting percentage also dropped from 65% to 60.9%. The current starting lineup only generates 97.4 points per 100 possessions... What's worse, the spacing doesn't get better when Tucker and Ennis go out because Clark and Hartenstein also fail to stretch the defense. The defenders guard them with their backs. The Rockets also had some tough luck. Paul missed some wide open layup today. The Rockets tried to speed up today with 18.75% of the Rockets shot attempts came from fast breaks. They just didn't finish well. The Rockets shooting percentage in the paint was only 51.4%. This time Harden simply missed a point blank layup... I've already mentioned that Ennis and Tucker's limited shooting ability allows the defense to ignore them. But Clark, despite his good defense, is also an offensive liability. He didn't shot a lot of threes in college but in the small sampling size so far, he shot 9.1 times every 36 minutes, but his shooting rate was only a pitiful 30.6%. It is difficult to imagine he will shoot better after a substantial increase in three point attempts. No matter how offensively limited our players are, we know Harden, Gordon and Paul always have the ability to create opportunities out of nothing. But so far, Harden’s true shooting percentage has been “only” 56.6%, and Gordon and Paul’s are below 50%. It is difficult to generate good offense when the three most important pieces of the offense are out of shape.
