I tried to watch Adams closely. True, he is very strong and that let's him do things other players can't. But his positioning is just amazing. How he does screens, on ball or off ball, and how he gains position for rebounding. Every big man should study Steven Adams's films. I'm looking at you, Christian Wood.
He's an underrated passer too. He's not flashy but he knows where to go with the ball when he has it in the paint.
Too stupid. You meant to say too stupid, selfish, or some other word in additional to frail. Wood might have been too frail to be Stephen Adam’s, but that wasn’t what held him back.
Just overall FG% alone, nothing else. Of regular rotation players only - 2025 3rd worst FG% .423, Jalen Green - 2026 .485, Reed Sheppard - 2025 2nd Worst FG% .378, Fred VanVleet - 2026 .484, Amen Thompson Jabari is the worst FG% in 2026, and he is nicely improved over last year. Reed is playing lights out Shep Curry, and is the same rank order as get-this-bum-outta-here Jalen Green last season. Small sample size, there will be regression. Rockets should probably shoot even more 3's, which will bring down overall FG%. But this is some nice bucket making early on
40% is so good it almost doesn’t make sense. Basically a coin flip as to whether we’ll get an offensive rebound. An absolutely massive built in advantage.
That's got to be so devastating to opposing defenses. It's not like we shoot a horrible percentage. We're 8th in team FG% at 49.1% and 1st in team 3pt% at 42.6%. To get so many extra possessions on top of that is nuts. And if teams really focus on keeping us off the offensive glass, via gang rebounding, it makes it harder for them to push out in transition against us.
Does anyone know what their rating is only using the OKC, Detroit, Spurs, Orlando and Bucks games? Also curious about the rating with double big on vs off.
113.4 against those 5 teams. Double Bigs (Sengun and Adams) 129 Without Double Bigs 123 I used Cleaning the Glass for the double bigs for speed.
Thing is, you can't really look at it that way because Adams also creates 4-5 offensive rebounds for other guys that don't show up on his stats because the defense often uses extreme measures to keep him from the glass. This is not to mention the 2-3 fouls he draws. In his unique way, Steven Adams is a force of nature on offense we haven't seen before.
He's said in the past he's not really that much stronger than most other NBA players around his size and it cracks him up when people say that. Instead he gets his "strength" mostly from leverage, his base, positioning, etc. and that he gets that from watching things like BJJ/judo/jiu-jitsu. He's a fan of MMA. ETA : Here's a video of Steve being interviewed about MMA. You can tell for real he follows/followed MMA more than as a casual fan. The video is a few years old :
The Rockets offense is propped up by an unsustainable shooting streak (43% from 3 as a team) and an equally unsustainable offensive rebounding rate (39%). Either of which would have the team finish as the greatest of all time in either statistic. What I saw against Orlando was not what a "#1" offense should look like. The offense looked stagnant and I saw WAY too many iso long 2s from players not named Kevin Durant. Being dead last in 3 point attempts isn't an issue if the offense is converting 2s at a very high rate, but the team is 24th in 2 point percentage. 52% from 2 as a team is an ugly stat, shared mostly by other bottom dwellers. I went through the last decade, and offensive rating and 2PT% are extremely tightly coorilated, here's how the last decade of #1 2PT% teams did on offense: 2025: CLE, #1 in ORTG 2024: IND, #2 in OTRG (2024 BOS finished #2 in 2PT%) 2023: SAC, #1 in OTRG 2022: DEN, #6 in ORTG (2022 UTA finished #2 in 2PT%) 2021: BKN, #1 in OTRG 2020: MIL, #8 in OTRG (2020 GSW finished #2 in 2PT%) 2019: MIL, #4 in OTRG (2019 GSW finished #2 in 2PT%) 2018: GSW, #3 in OTRG (2018 HOU finished #2 in 2PT%) 2017: GSW, #1 in OTRG 2016: GSW, #1 in ORTG 2015: LAC, #1 in ORTG Every team that finished with the top offense was either the best 2PT shooting team in the NBA or the second best. I have also never seen a team that was bottom 10 in 2PT% finish in the top 5 of ORTG. Ime needs to fix up this offense to search for more efficient shots. Even if the team regresses to 38% from 3, there's no reason not to launch at least 40 a game, and cut down on the long 2s, especially out of isolation. That, or he needs to do what MDA did on defense and hire an assistant to coach that half of the court.
Update: after last night they are now 25th in 2 point percentage. The only teams lower are Sacramento, Washington, Memphis, Indiana, and New Orleans.
Yes, Sengün shooting over 40 percent and Tari over 50% are unrealistic......long term. Or Okogie. But Reed and Durant shooting over 40 percent, I think those guys I would have a better feeling about.
Yet 6th in TS% and 8th in EFG%. It is a bit of cherry picking to take only one type of shot and then say that all of the positive outliers will regress while ignoring the negative ones like Amen being 7pts worse and Sengun 5pts worse on 2pt FG % than last year. Sengun and Okogie will revert on 3pt and Sengun and Amen will revert on 2pt. The net effect has been great and likely will continue to be great.
Maybe all the missed tips around the basket by Adams and Sengun has something to do with the low 2pt percentage. Amen's finishing at the rim is uncharacteristically bad this season. He will likely improve back to his norm.
