The Rockets Must Reestablish Their Elite Defensive Identity

The Houston Rockets returned to competitiveness by becoming one of the league's best defenses and rebounding units. This helped them even when their offense wasn't able to match their defensive performance. Houston's rebounding supplemented its scoring, and the team's overall toughness helped the Rockets get physical with other teams.

The Rockets need to return to that identity to bring back their advantage over opposing teams. They haven't proven they can consistently outperform teams offensively, so they must find a way to bring back their toughness and elite defense.

The Rockets were still stout defensively this year, and had another excellent year on the glass. However, there was a greater emphasis on the offensive end, despite that not being Houston's calling card.

This emphasis was mostly out of necessity, as an injury to Fred VanVleet forced the entire team to carry more of the load offensively.

Amen Thompson, Kevin Durant, and Alperen Şengün were each asked to provide more on the offensive end, especially when it came to initiating the offense.

As the team's best defensive player, Thompson's newfound responsibilities on offense took some of his available energy away from his defensive efforts. The Rockets needed him to handle the ball more and attempt to break down defenses with his offensive efforts. He found some struggles during his increased responsibility, and the team's overall defense struggled at times due to his lack of energy for point-of-attack defense.

Steven Adams' injury slowed down their rebounding excellence and removed some of the toughness from the lineup.

Adams helped the Rockets to an elite pace on the glass, reaching historic levels of rebounding before his injury. Players like Thompson, Şengün, Tari Eason, and Jabari Smith Jr. helped the Rockets continue their rebounding success, but they were a much different team with Adams in the lineup.

Once the Rockets couldn't depend on inhaling every missed shot to supplement their offense, it naturally led to a higher emphasis on the offensive end. The Rockets never had the same level of firepower offensively as some of their Western Conference competition, so they were quickly working from behind against some of league's best teams.

Next season, the offense will some help from the return of VanVleet, and ideally improvement from the team's young players like Reed Sheppard. However, what makes the Rockets unique is their ability to throw many defensive wings at teams and dominate the offenisive glass. The Rockets will need to return to that identity to make more noise next season.