What is this team's greatest individual basketball skills deficiency?

Seems like no one gives love for our offensive rebounding, we are 2nd in the league with 12.45 per game (only Nuggets are better with 12.6)

 

In addition we shooting at one of the worst FT% in the league, and are 2nd worst with 17.1 turnover per game (just behind 76ers with 17.4). We also make only 19.9 assists per game and it's 6th worst in the league. And you guys keep voting that's our best weapons on offense. Oh please!

 

We're turning the ball over a lot because of all of the different lineups we've had to use due to injuries.

Rockets have had more changes in starting lineup than any other team this season. Turnovers will go down once(if) we start to get healthy again.

 

Do you know, when Dmo posts up it's not an assist? because it's essentially a back to the basket iso play. So he does this 10 times a game, scores 6 times, 0 assists, i'll take 6/10

We're also the second lowest fgm team in the nba (threes and free throws will do that)

 

Wrong! Since James Harden joined Houston Rockets we lead in turnover every single year - we had 15.8 (worst) in 12/13 season and 15.4 (2nd worst behind 76ers) last year.

 

turnovers, FT%, turnovers

 

And how many new additions and lineup changes have we had since Harden has been here? Has there been any continuity in our rotation, at all? No, there hasn't been.

 

Its not all about Harden, I agree.

 

As others have stated, a secondary playmaker who can run the team and give Harden more rest but accepts that Harden is our top dog.

Rim protection from Howard's back up and rebounding.

 

Me too. He would give us another good rebounder, another good post defender, a player could play backup 5 if needed, would be able to space the floor on offense by hitting some open jumpshots and is a good passer from the high post to have another dimension of playmaking.

Probably a pipe dream. But man, he would fit our team perfectly.

 

I see FT% is popular. You cant argue we're not great in that category but I hardly see it as much of a problem. Plenty of title teams have been weak there. FTM's are a forte, that's the most important thing.

 

Passing/play making & harden getting rest LOWRY

maybe the stats & data couldn't tell us that this summer :grin:,but seems like CFs knows

 

Lowry was the first free agent that Morey talked to this summer. He chose to stay in Toronto instead

 

Turnovers aren't that big of a deal to me. OKC and Miami of the past few years turned it over a lot and were still great. GS is turning it over a lot and is the best team out of the gate.

If Dwight suddenly became an 80% FT shooter it would make our team unguardable, but it's not realistic.

Playmaking or another scoring punch is the thing we lack that I think is able to be addressed through trade.

So to answer the question, FT shooting would instantly vault Dwight into being a top 3 guy and benefit our team more, but playmaking/another scorer is the deficiency we can actually address.

 

Turnovers and team playmaking surely are right there at the top, but I felt that the free throw problem edges both of those.

I probably couldn't count on all my fingers and toes how many games we'd have won in the past couple years if we'd just had an average FT%. The fact that ALL of our bigs are terrible is incredibly limiting to the team. You can't run an effective offense close to the rim, because it makes complete sense to just foul our big guys. This means Harden has to make dozens of bulldozing drives to the basket every game, because he's the only one that has a shot of still getting the two points if he misses. Some day he's going to reach his limit and get seriously injured on one of those drives.

It also means the guards and other assisters have to be even more clever and precise with their passes down low to hopefully get the ball to the bigs before they can get fouled. I just don't get why this is such a problem and why so many on the team still seem to have such poor form. I think Dirk once said that being tall just made it easier to make free throws because the ball releases so much closer to the basket.

I've probably said this more than anything else I've said on this forum, but you have one of the greatest free throw shooters of all time and probably the biggest Rockets fan ever in Houston as part of the now-Roots-Sports broadcast team. If we can make such a startling turnaround defense in one offseason, can we not get Calvin over there to show our big guys how to not be a liability on the line? It's absurdity that you can make it to the NBA and shoot free throws as poorly as so many people on our team.

 

playmaking and turnovers

 

Amen! It's like going to Open House at your kid's school, and the teacher misspells something or uses double negatives. Have some GD pride in your profession and learn to make your damn free throws!!!!