Takeaways from the Rockets' 102-94 win against the Sacramento Kings:
Had the Rockets lost another shorthanded game on Saturday, had they traded baskets through the night and fallen short by not making the last one, it would have been understandable. They could not, however, look at it that way. The standings don’t take circumstances into account.
When James Harden came out uncharacteristically early to go through his pregame shooting, it was clear he had to have had a reason for changing up a routine he never alters.
Harden arrives at Toyota Center each night at precisely the same time. He does the same preparations in the training room. He ties his shoes at the same time and when done, immediately sprints to the floor. He hits the court with a no-look reverse layup and then moves through the same stations in the same order.
On Saturday, he came out early, after Bruno Caboclo and Brodric Thomas and at the end of Jae-Sean Tate’s shooting.
The change was to allow time to get ready after testing an ankle sprain he picked up in the closing minutes on Thursday. He was not ruled out until less than an hour before tip.
The Rockets were still trying to make up for lost time. John Wall, Eric Gordon and DeMarcus Cousins had not only missed the season’s first two games, both losses with seven players out, they had just one practice after a week in quarantine before consecutive games to the Kings, a young team on the rise that came in at 3-1 with a pair of wins against a Nuggets team that had blasted the Rockets.
Shorthanded again, the Rockets could have felt deflated by another bit of bad luck and defeated.
Instead, they fought. They played as if they expected to win and knew that they needed to.
After their games against the Kings, they face the Mavericks on Monday before a pair of games against two of the hotter teams to start the season, the Pacers and Magic. That leads to consecutive games against the Lakers.
The Rockets had already dropped a pair of games to start the shortened season. They made sure they did not lose another on Saturday. They don’t want to make a habit of it, but also showed they can win without Harden should it ever come up again.
1. The Rockets can still score. They are built for it, with Christian Wood the best offensive center Harden has ever had as a teammate, Wall looking as if he never went out and the bench seeming deeper with potential scorers than it has been since Gordon’s sixth man of the year season.
That will not be enough in the loaded Western Conference. There are lots of teams that can score like crazy. These days, it is just about the price of admission, with the Nuggets and Blazers already giving the Rockets a reminder, and that’s before the Rockets see the Lakers, Clippers, Suns, Mavs and Jazz.
The Rockets had been awful defensively for 3 ½ games. While that was understandable given how little practice time they had gotten together and the changes Stephen Silas was working to put in, it had to change. It had to change on Saturday.
“In order for us to be good, we have to be good on defense,” Silas said. “We can’t just outscore people. You see the second half, we only scored 38 points, but we held them to 30. That’s the sign of a team that is committed on the defensive end. I was proud of the second half. I was proud of those guys for fighting and coming together on the defensive end.”
At full strength, the Rockets expect to be able to put up numbers opponents cannot match. They tend to think of themselves as a high-scoring team first. With the league’s top scorer in each of the previous three seasons and so far this season, they should be at or near the top of most offensive measures. Only Silas’ Mavericks offense topped them last season and the Rockets always thought they should not have allowed such a thing.
Without Harden, however, there was an understanding that even with a 64-point half on Saturday, the defense had better show up.
“When you’re an offensive team and you have as many offensive weapons as we have and sometimes it comes a little bit easier to you, it can become a shot trade,” Silas said. “Sometimes as a human being you tend to do the things that are easiest. The offensive end can be pretty easy if you got talent and you got spacing and you got optionality. But the defensive part is hard.
“It’s not something that you can just rely on your talent to do. You have to rely on your hard play, your grit. You really have to want to do it not only for yourself but to do it for your teammates.”
The Rockets wanted it after Saturday’s halftime. They had done little to stop the Kings for six quarters. The Nuggets had toyed with them to start the week. The Rockets had reached the point to make a stand.
They will still have to improve greatly with some of the more traditional defenses Silas will want with Wood and Cousins on the floor. They will have to defend with more consistent conviction. They must rebound much better.
But they might have demonstrated to themselves what is possible. They did it because they had to. They still do.
2. The Rockets did not know what to expect of Wall. They hoped. They believed in the talent he always had before the injuries and surgeries halted his career for two years. But there was no way to know how he would be when he came back or for how long.
A week into the season, he has wildly exceeded expectations if the Rockets could even have any.
“I didn’t have many expectations,” Silas said. “I didn’t know what to expect. I saw some Instagram videos and stuff, playing pickup. We heard from people that said he looked good. But we didn’t know until we got him.
“Whatever expectations I had … he obviously exceeded them. He’s scoring. He’s making plays for others. He’s still rusty with his decision-making and he knows that. That’s just a part of it. When you haven’t played in so long, you shouldn’t expect him to be totally crisp all the way through.”
Wall expected all of this. If anything, he has often seemed displeased with turnovers or when shots don’t fall. But he also returns to thoughts of what it took to reach this point.
“I couldn’t ask for a better start to be 2-0 in my first two games playing and be with a great organization,” he said.
There is still some rust. He is still getting accustomed to teammates. The process will continue well into the season, maybe throughout the season. But he has been a star. After two years of surgeries and rehabs, he is not just explosive, as fast as at the start of his career when he was the first pick of a draft, he has defended in ways that are not normally possible immediately after such a long layoff.
“Really happy with John’s all-around game,” Silas said. “The defensive end is what I’m most happy about.”
If anything was going to demonstrate where he is in the comeback, it is not the flashes of end to end, straight-line speed. It is defense. It is when he has to make unscheduled, rapid moves. That has been there.
“It’s fun to have John out there because he’s a good on-the-ball defender, as well,” Gordon said. “We kind of pick and choose when we’re going to be very aggressive on some of their best ballhandlers. It’s good to have that.”
It has also been noticed, and by the most demanding of defensive critics.
“John has been really good defensively,” P.J. Tucker said. “He lays his body on the line a lot and he plays hard. John plays hard. He has a big heart. He plays with a lot of intensity. You can't put a value on that."
3. Wood picked up his fourth foul early in the second half. He turned to Silas and asked to remain in the game. Silas obliged. Moments later, Wood turned the ball over and immediately reached in, picking up his fifth foul and forcing himself to the bench.
In some ways, that was a good mistake for the Rockets.
Wood has never had the sort of responsibility he carries for the Rockets. He rarely has played enough to concern himself with foul trouble. Even when he had that role with the Pistons late last season, he was playing for the going-nowhere Pistons. Less was at stake or expected.
Wood has been phenomenal in many ways to start the season. Among centers, only Joel Embiid is outscoring his 23.5 points per game. With his 15 rebounds on Saturday, Wood is averaging 10.8. He is showing the potential to be a devastating pick-and-roll partner for Wall and Harden once they can all play a few games together.
Wood, however, has to make the strides to be the defensive anchor of a starting center. He shows signs of being able to do that. As with avoiding foul trouble, that has to be among the responsibilities that come when playing 33 to 36 minutes a game.
“Christian Wood was good tonight,” Tucker said. “He can really score the ball. We got to get him locked in on defense. He has to be a floor leader on defense. He’s got to talk more. He’s got to let us know coverages. He’s got to take that step. I think that’s the next step for him to be a great player.
“He scores so easy. Once he starts doing that on defense, he’s going to be a hell of a player.”
Tucker did not say ‘if.’ He said when. Wood looks every bit the part the Rockets have entrusted to him. Saturday was another step in that direction for a player with a larger role than he has ever had before and showing what he can do with it.
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