[The Athletic] The RoCo Deal Shows Just How Small and Unconventional the Rockets Are Willing To Go

As Rockets teammates converged in the locker room moments after a 125-110 win over the Charlotte Hornets, a fully dressed Clint Capela took a slow stride through the Toyota Center tunnel.

Normally, when players exit the arena, they do so via the loading dock adjacent to the court. This time, Capela opted for the opposite end of the building, hanging around between the media workroom and the restroom for a while before ducking off into the evening.

Late Tuesday night, multiple reports detailed the completion of a monster four-team deal between the Houston Rockets, Minnesota Timberwolves, Atlanta Hawks and Denver Nuggets. The major moving parts of this deal, which includes an unprecedented twelve players, are Robert Covington being traded to Houston and Capela being traded to Atlanta. The Rockets also reportedly received Jordan Bell and a second-round pick, shipped Nene’s contract to Atlanta and sent Gerald Green to Denver.

In the end, Daryl Morey got his man.

It’s perhaps the worst-kept secret in basketball that Houston was seeking a starting-level wing player, and their failed pursuits of Paul George and Jimmy Butler in years past only strengthened that sentiment. But Morey wasn’t going to let another opportunity like this slip, not this year. Even if it took him pulling off the most complicated deal in his 12 seasons as general manager.

The Rockets, as we know, are uber-aggressive when it comes to talent acquisition — probably the most aggressive — and over the past few weeks, they had spoken to just about every team in the league, canvassing for an upgrade at the combo forward. The untimely passing of Kobe Bryant brought a league-wide moratorium of sorts, but since last Saturday — Feb. 1 — Houston’s front office doubled down. Longer hours in the office, more time on the phones.

For five and a half seasons, Capela was everything the Rockets asked for, within the realms of their system. A young, hungry, athletic big man who came into the league as a sponge ready to soak up knowledge. He bided his time patiently behind Dwight Howard in the rotation. When his chance came to take the starting role, he grasped it with two gigantic hands. He perfected his pick-and-roll game with Chris Paul and improved his conditioning, along with his diet.

The Rockets’ game plan for him was simple. He wasn’t on the floor to be a Nikola Jokic, a Karl Anthony-Towns, or Anthony Davis. They asked him to set screens, run the floor, defend the paint and finish at the rim. He was able to carry out those tasks — perhaps not at an elite rate, but good enough to keep Houston competitive in the Western Conference. Sometimes, he was even great.

At times, Capela showed flashes of how dominant he could be. The underlying storyline of the 2018 Minnesota first-round series was Towns’ inability to exert himself against the Swiss center. The Jazz series gave hope to Capela’s next stage of defensive development. His overall basketball IQ increased tenfold. He earned a five-year, $90 million contract, a testament to his progress and sign of good faith from the organization.

But there were also times when he frustrated his teammates, his coaches. There was a sense that while Capela was a fine young player, he still had a ways to go. At times, he wouldn’t establish himself as a presence on either end of the floor. His poor performance against the Warriors might have been the final straw, being so thoroughly outplayed by the Warriors’ combination of Kevon Looney and Draymond Green that Mike D’Antoni was forced to go to a different lineup.

To make matters worse, the Rockets’ style of offense slowly but surely went away from their original bread and butter: pick-and-roll. An injury-ravaged 2018-19 season caused Harden to tap into his isolation bag of tricks, an aspect which eventually took on a life of its own as Houston climbed out of the conference gutters and back into playoff contention. The offseason acquisition of Russell Westbrook only further pushed this agenda, being a different type of point guard than Chris Paul was for two seasons. Between Westbrook and Harden, the Rockets made it clear they were relying less on screen-setting and rim-running, and more on the individual talents of their backcourt.

It’s also a horribly kept secret that at one point NBA history, D’Antoni gave birth to small ball, and badly wanted to reconnect with his brainchild. The year that Houston won an unprecedented 65 games often had D’Antoni resorting to P.J. Tucker-at-center units, something that gave the team an advantage against traditional lineups and pushed schematics to the edge. Offensively, they had the entire court spaced out for whatever actions they wanted. Defensively, everything would be switched, almost forcing the opponent to look for a mismatch when there really wasn’t one. The Rockets had 3-and-D wings for days.

Now, Robert Covington is a Rocket. Why? Because he’s one of the league’s premier ball-stoppers, has a 7-foot-2 wingspan, and can hit outside shots. It’s really that simple. You can scoff at his .346 clip from deep this season, or you can look at the 36 percent he’s shooting on five open (or wide-open) attempts a night. He’ll get open looks in this system, so those are shooting splits the Rockets won’t lose sleep over. Per Synergy, he rates well in both spot-up and transition offense, placing in the 66th and 62nd percentile, respectively.

It’s almost like the reincarnation of Trevor Ariza, only five years younger. The Rockets have fallen back in love with small ball, only this time they’re in a fully committed relationship. There are no doubts about what they want to do. All you have to do is hear D’Antoni speak about the benefits and positives while minimizing the negatives. A spread floor for Russ and Harden to attack, spacious lanes to drive-and-kick to Eric Gordon, Ben McLemore, and Danuel House. It’s apparent that Houston doesn’t want to play with a traditional lineup anymore. In that case, for the way they play now, could you could make the case that they even got better?

As a Rocket, Covington walks into a locker room instantly crowned as their best perimeter defender. Conventional thinking says the Rockets got worse by dealing away their starting center. The only problem with that thinking is that this team deals in the exact opposite of what’s conventional. It started with the analytics movement and moved on taking 3-point shots to the extreme and seeking shots around the rim. They want to push the boundaries. They want to test the limits. This is D’Antoni’s crazy science experiment.

“Yea, I just imagined it,” D’Antoni joked on Monday, imagining an extended stretch of small ball. “Yea I think you can. What’s the best lineup in the last five years? The Death Lineup. Draymond Green—6-6, 6-5—at center.”

I wouldn’t go as far as to say as Houston got better, not just yet. But, they got different.

Now, you don’t necessarily have to rely on 37 minutes of a 34-year-old P.J. Tucker a night. The same way that D’Antoni staggers his backcourt, he can do the same with his frontcourt. In a perfect, analytical-based world, there are obviously certain combinations of lineups that the coaching staff would prefer not to play. Now, you don’t have to. Say you want to bring Gordon back off the bench. Now, you can pair Harden and Westbrook with a frontcourt of House, Covington, and Tucker. You can go as far as ensuring that at least two of those 3-and-D forwards stay on the floor at all times, just as you would with one of Russ/Harden. It gives Houston variance, something this team has always strived to achieve.

“Well, the biggest thing is Russell,” D’Antoni said. “How can we get what he does best and get to the rim? How can we capitalize on that 100 percent? Sometimes you’re afraid to try it … After the Utah game, I said why not, let’s try it, look at it, and see what it looks like. We just have a unique team that’s different. Some people might say it’s gimmicky, or whatnot, but it’s not. It’s doable and I think we’ll get better at it, and better defensively. We just have to watch the second-chance points. Be sure when you criticize it, don’t say they outrebounded by 25. That’s not a stat that even matters. If you say they scored eight more second-chance points, OK. Then I get that.”

The Rockets now have an extra body to throw on Paul George, Kawhi Leonard, LeBron James and even Anthony Davis. This move, albeit a major paradigm shift, was always made with their competition in mind. If the organization figured their best five in a hypothetical series against either LA team didn’t feature Capela, a move was necessary. The ending of the Lakers-Rockets game last month, a game where LeBron played as a small-ball five down the stretch, proved the tipping point in that fixture. D’Antoni surely doesn’t want to make a similar mistake like that again, especially in the likely event that he meets either of these teams in the postseason.

There’s still time before Thursday’s 3 P.M EST trade deadline, as well. Houston isn’t sitting back between now and then, rather still maintaining their aggressive approach to further upgrade the roster.

The Rockets also received Jordan Bell in the deal, a 6-foot-8 F/C with athleticism who’s bounced around a bit in his young career, though it’s unclear if he’ll get on the floor long enough to make an impact.

In any case, Houston isn’t done doing business. Morey will be working the phones, either to find a way to expand this trade and take on additional salary or patiently waiting for the buyout market. Tristan Thompson remains an option in the latter regard, as does Michael Kidd-Gilchrist among a host of other possible names. There are a plethora of ways to continue to try and improve this team, but the important thing is the first major domino has fallen.

The NBA is changing, and the best teams are longer and stronger. And the Rockets couldn’t care less.