Rockets, Magic In Role Reversal After Star Swap
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Watch what you wish for.
That’s the lesson Tracy McGrady is learning this season, as his Houston Rockets limp along at 9-12 while his former team, the Orlando Magic, is riding high at 13-8. It’s an amazing transformation considering that last season the Rockets won more than twice as many games as the Magic, which is why McGrady made his trade request in the first place.
One of the three players for whom McGrady was dealt – Steve Francis – has surprised everyone by playing just as well as McGrady, turning a deal that seemed one-sided in the Rockets’ favor into a home run for the Magic. Cuttino Mobley, the other key player in the deal, has also played better than he ever did in Houston.
Of course, the main driver behind Orlando’s unexpectedly brief rebuilding job has been the miraculous return of Grant Hill. McGrady has to feel a bit jilted: He waited three years for Hill to get healthy and it never happened, but now Hill is suddenly as good as new. Meanwhile, McGrady is in the same situation in Houston that vexed him in Orlando, facing defenses that constantly run multiple defenders at him and lacking teammates who are good enough to make them pay.
That’s only part of the problem, however. Houston’s offense was unusually anemic last year as well, with both Francis and Mobley having their worst pro seasons. The one thing the Houston careers of both Francis and McGrady have in common is Jeff Van Gundy, which has some of the press corps’ snarkier members murmuring that the coach is killing McGrady.
Van Gundy, as Knicks fans know all too well, is a bit of a control freak, wanting to run a structured half-court offense that features the post players and occasional isolation plays for the perimeter guys. What he doesn’t do is run, which is a shame because McGrady is deadly in the open court. Mc-Grady showed that in a Jordanesque spurt against San Antonio a week ago, when he popped in four 3-pointers in 35 seconds to erase a double-digit deficit. Yet in their next game, the Rockets went back to walking it upcourt and limped to a 102-78 beating at the hands of the Mavericks.
The contrast with McGrady’s former team couldn’t be more obvious. The Magic hired assistant coach Paul Westhead in the off-season to teach the team to push the ball upcourt. This is the man who engineered Loyola Marymount’s hyperactive playing style in the late 1980s and won an NBA title as the brains behind Magic Johnson’s fast-breaking Lakers. The results show the Magic have been listening.
I keep a stat called “Pace Factor” that measures how many possessions each team uses in a game; the higher the number, the faster the pace. The Magic and Rockets represent opposite poles. Orlando is easily the fastest-paced team in the NBA, with an average of 98.8 possessions per game. Houston, meanwhile, is dead last at 88.1.
What’s amazing about Orlando’s ability to run is that Francis and Mobley weren’t regarded as open-court players until this season. Sure, they had the ability to finish in transition, but even before Van Gundy came to Houston, neither had shown much initiative in pushing the ball up the court, instead preferring to run clear outs in a half-court setup. Obviously, having greyhounds like Hill and rookie Dwight Howard to run with them provided some incentive, but the lion’s share of credit has to go to Westhead (along with head coach Johnny Davis) for changing the guards’ mindset about how to attack the defense.
Meanwhile, Houston’s attack is looking increasingly anachronistic. The chart of the top five and bottom five in Pace Factor is telling. The three fastest-paced teams have all been huge surprises this year, and the next two are performing better than expected. Conversely, the five slowest-paced teams have been enormous disappointments.
Don’t think for a second that’s an accident. The off-season rule change cracking down on hand-checking shifted the entire equation on the odds of scoring in transition, with running teams being the beneficiaries and slow-it-down outfits left out in the cold. The Magic had the good luck to be in the right place at the right time when they implemented their new approach, resulting in a banner year that’s exceeded even their most optimistic expectations. And while they might come back to earth a bit – they’ve won an unusual number of close games – this is a playoff team that could even be hosting a first-round series.
As for the Rockets, Van Gundy must be looking longingly at what his former players have been accomplishing in an up-tempo attack. His options for increasing the tempo in Houston aren’t nearly as apparent. It’s easy to blame Van Gundy’s offensive approach, but what would you do with this personnel? His second-best player (Yao Ming) is a 7-foot-6 center who runs like the tree people in “Lord of the Rings,” while his small forward (Jim Jackson) is about three years from Medicare eligibility and can’t jump anymore. His power forwards both are lumbering 260-pounders, and one of them (Juwan Howard) is dropping so many passes that he’s being confused with Jeremy Shockey.
Houston does have a few options for picking up the tempo – finding more minutes at power forward for the undersized but effective Scott Padgett, getting recently activated Bob Sura the ball and letting him push it upcourt, and going with a smaller lineup that uses McGrady as a forward – but blaming Van Gundy ignores the fact that the Rockets weren’t built to run.
So while the Magic have lived up to their name, the Rockets have to feel like they just got on the Autobahn in a Studebaker. As for McGrady, one can only wonder whether he still wishes he had been traded. It looks like he’ll have plenty of time in the spring to contemplate that decision.