NBA Finals takeaway: The Rockets aren’t close

As I begrudgingly watched the NBA Playoffs after the Houston Rockets embarrassing effort against the Los Angeles Lakers, it became more and more clear to me that the words 0f the former football coaching legend Bill Parcels were spot on. He once famously said, “You are what you record says you are.”

While the Rockets won 52 games for the second consecutive season, that record was only good enough to put them in the fifth seed in the Western Conference. No one would argue honestly that they were contenders after watching their Round 1 exit. This became clearer after watching both the San Antonio Spurs and New York Knicks in the Finals.

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It’s not as much a talent discrepancy as it is a skillset and structure discrepancy… The Spurs have a plethora of guards, the Knicks gave multiple guards, the Rockets have three guards. Reed Sheppard, Aaron Holiday, and Fred VanVleet. Of those three players, none of them are top tier at creating their own shot, and none of them is taller than 6-feet 2-inches. Of the three, I guess we can call Reed Sheppard the most consistent shooter, but it would be hard to label any of them as consistent.

When it comes to the offensive structure of the teams in the Finals, I watched two teams that were not perfect by any means, but teams that moved the basketball, had players moving without the ball, and with the exception of the Knicks occasionally allowing Capt. Clutch put on his cape in critical moments in the games, there wasn’t a lot of standing around and watching iso ball. If you watched the Rockets this season, then you know there were times that it looked like the Rockets don’t even practice offense. This was especially the case when Kevin Durant was out with injury in the playoffs.

Rockets fans have to ask themselves if at the age of 32 and coming off of a torn ACL is the 6-foot Fred VanVleet going to be enough to transform this team into a high-powered offense? While there is no doubt he will add more structure to the offense, the real issue is he can only contribute to the structure of the offense to the extent that a structure has been put in place by the head…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/nba-finals-takeaway-rockets-aren-123637581.html

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Publish date : 2026-06-17 12:36:00

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