The missing piece that rockets need to help James Harden

At a mysterious press conference Friday after his fourth playoff defeat against the Warriors in five seasons, James Harden said he knew exactly what the Rockets needed to overcome the bump, but that ### He would not say what. These may not be empty words, as their list is disturbing: they have no one taller than Harden (6 feet 5 inches) who can create his own shot, or blows for his teammates.

Almost all teams in the NBA championship have benefited from offensive creativity from their front yard. Recent history is the perfect example: the Warriors had Draymond Green, then Kevin Durant, LeBron James played with Kevin Love on the Cavs and Chris Bosh on heat, the Spurs had Kawhi Leonard and Tim Duncan, and the Mavs had Dirk Nowitzki. Although some of these players do not fit perfectly with the Rockets, a leading player in their caliber would make their attack less predictable. Harden does not need to play with a weak threat. He needs a coaching partner who can score against a smaller player during an exchange and play in four-on-three situations. If he can not play with someone like Durant, he at least needs his own version of Draymond.

Houston is a team focused on the guard. Everything happens either by Harden or Chris Paul, who manages the offensive in turn. The goal is to isolate them in space against larger and slower defenders. There is not much movement of the ball and all the other players in their rotation have a rigidly defined role. Rockets head coach Mike D'Antoni has been criticized for his lack of variety in his attack, but he does not have much choice. The only other players that he can go to the offensive are the 6-foot-3 combo guards (Eric Gordon and Austin Rivers). Everyone is either an elite shooter (P.J. Tucker, Iman Shumpert, Danuel House Jr. and Gerald Green) or a tall man on the rim (Clint Capela). It's not as if D'Antoni could build his offensive around Nene at this stage of his career. Tucker or Capela have no interest in launching games to make decisions.

Running a simplistic offense does not matter much against most NBA teams. Houston has been at the forefront of the analysis movements under General Manager Daryl Morey and, as a result, they practice a different sport than most players in the league. Few teams have enough mobile defenders at the center to prevent Harden and Paul from creating an open 3 apart from dribbling and pick-and-roll. Their ability to dominate overfished defenders allows them to create 3 wide open for their shooters and lobs to the rim for their big men. These coins were eliminated against Golden State, who played Green and Kevon Looney at the center of the series between the two teams, allowing them to switch screens and stay at home with everyone instead of getting rid of Harden and Paul.

No rocket has suffered more from this type of defense than Capela, which has become almost unplayable against the Warriors. It went from an average of 16.6 points on 64.8% to shooting and 12.7 rebounds per game in the regular season to 8.8 points on 53.3% shooting and 10.0 years of rebounds per game in the series. Houston got a staggering net score of minus 15.2 in 172 minutes of floor play over the series. The same thing happened in the Western Conference final of last season, when Capela was swept by small teams that revealed the holes in his offensive game. He has no role in a series with so many changes. It's no use throwing pick-and-roll with him, because it just changes another good defender on Harden and Paul, and he can not do anything else.

Houston had no one to take over. Tucker had an unbelievable streak as a small 5 ball, but most of his offensive damage came from Focus 3 and the offensive shot attack. The only domestic rocket reserve to have played is Nene, a tall 36-year-old who does not have the speed to stay on the ground for too long against Golden State. The attack is rather limited on the field before: Capela led this unit scoring (16.6 points per game), while Tucker (1.2 assists per game) led the way. The only team to win an NBA title since the beginning of the millennium without at least one first-division player having averaged 18 points or three assists per game was the 2004 Pistons. And they still had Rasheed Wallace, who was much more skillful than his Rocket counterparts.

Attacking from as many positions as possible is crucial against an elite defense. It is more difficult to defend a team with attackers able to score and create open fire for their guards, instead of needing their guards to feed them with a spoon. The ball can fly around the field, swaying between players who can collapse the defense and kick it out. The conventional wisdom that a dominant scorer was needed to win a championship confused causality with correlation. The real need was to ensure that the players in the front zone could be on the offensive, and the vast majority of players from 6 feet 9 years and older, from the history of the NBA, capable of To assume this responsibility were post-scorers. How a player of this size attacked a defense was not as important as the fact that he was doing it.

Some of the best rock formations in this series featured the four creators of their throws: Harden, Paul, Rivers and Gordon. This quartet had a net score of plus-3.7 in 36 minutes and was one of only two groups with only four employees over 30 minutes of the series to have a positive net score. Harden was the tallest player of the four players, making him the powerful striker in those lineups. Instead of associating Harden with a game and a score of 4, D'Antoni turned his superstar into one by playing as many smaller guards around him. The difference between this version of the Rockets and last season is that they have added offensive versatility in their cast (Rivers and House) at the expense of length and athleticism (Trevor Ariza and Luc Richard Mbah by Moute ).

The problem with the Rockets, especially in relation to the Warriors, is that they have never had players that combine the two. They have no one comparable to Andre Iguodala or Klay Thompson, let alone Draymond or Durant. None of their other stroke designers are natural choice partners for a star guard. Golden State can switch a screen between Harden and Gordon, Paul or Rivers and keep defensemen of similar size on both players. They do not have to worry about any of these three Harden defenseman attacks on a switch. It is always him who must create the imbalance, which exhausts him during a series. My assumption is that the main cause of Harden's weakening in the playoffs is his overwhelming offensive responsibility, and not in any fault of his character or game.

Harden does not play with anyone who makes his life easier as Draymond and Durant do for Steph Curry. The game that sealed the sixth game for Golden State (A Thompson 3 with 36 seconds remaining in the fourth quarter) summed up the difference between the two teams. Houston blitz-pick-and-roll between Steph and Draymond, creating a four-on-three opportunity for Draymond at the three-point line. He entered the alley and found Iguodala in the corner, who then swung the balloon towards Thompson. There is no one in the Rockets lineup who can play consistently in the game played by Green. Draymond is a legitimate argument. Neither Capela nor Tucker are comfortable playing dribbling. Warriors can overload to stop Harden without worrying that his players are on the field before paying them.

The problem is that All-NBA futures are almost impossible to acquire in transactions and they are incredibly expensive in distribution agency. Houston does not have many negotiable contracts and will have no room for maneuver in the foreseeable future. The Rockets pay over $ 90 million a year to Harden, Paul and Capela alone until the 2021-2022 season. The only other salaries they could get are Gordon (there's only one year left, $ 14.1 million left) and Tucker ($ 8.3 million next season, with a partial guarantee for 2020-2021 ). Houston has a very heavy list because it has spent the last 12 months trying desperately to avoid the luxury tax. The surprise is not that the minimum-wage players they added in the offseason (Carmelo Anthony, Michael Carter-Williams and James Ennis III) have died out. It is because they have found decent substitutes on the cable of renunciation.

Houston may have to move Paul or Capela. Neither is irreplaceable. Paul is an excellent secondary scorer who can initiate the offensive after Harden's exit, but he is a deliberate offensive player who is always at his best with the ball in his hands. He begins to slow down and collapse physically as he enters his mid-thirties, and he does not attack the closeup with the same ferocity as Rivers and Gordon, who both surpassed him for most Warriors series. Capela is the rare seven-footer who can finish on the edge and defend himself on the perimeter, but he's a limited offensive player who is closer to a platoon center than a featured option against elite teams . However, even if Morey put them on the market, their salaries could make it difficult to obtain a great value.

Rockets should be aggressive this season. Hope Durant leaves the ranks and weakens the Warriors will not be enough. Not only has Golden State closed them in Houston without Durant, but their players are unlikely to be as good. Paul and Tucker are 34, Gordon is 30 and Harden is 29. Capela is only 26 years old, but looks close to her ceiling. Rivers (26) and House (25) have no room for internal improvement, and there is no guarantee that they will retain free authority as they are both in the running for big increases. The rough draft will not help either, as they packaged their choices with poor wages in the trades to evade the tax. Nor can they count on the real key to their lasting success during the Harden era: it has made up for the shortcomings of their teams by improving for seven consecutive seasons. It's hard to imagine how he could win one of the best offensive campaigns in NBA history.

Harden is one of the smartest players in the league. He can see the differences between his actors and those of Curry. He even told Curry during the All-Star Game that he did not want to keep playing that way. The question is whether he can do anything about it. The biggest thing that a star can do to help his team is to recruit another star, as Harden did with Paul. There will be plenty of star players available in free agency this off season. Jimmy Butler and Kawhi Leonard are both best placed to fill the Rockets' lineup. The only way for them to clear enough space under the salary cap to pursue any of them would be to use first – round choices to overthrow Paul and one. Gordon, Tucker or Capela members on another team, or all three of them. and fill out their list with minimum wage players.

That would be hard to get, which means Harden will probably have to do even more for his attacking team than any other player in the league. That's why he finished MVP's runner-up in the 2014-15 and 2016-17 seasons and won the award last season. All signs indicate that he wins his second MVP title this season or that he finishes second on Giannis Antetokounmpo. Harden just has one of the nicest five-year races in the history of the NBA, rising from his 24 years old to 29 years old. He is unlikely to keep this pace from 30 to 34. The Rockets have built a team that has placed Harden in an excellent position to win the MVP title but no championships. If it does not change soon, he can start looking for exits.