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Thunder

[Christian Wood] has been subject to interest around the league, and sources say Miami has been one of the more persistent teams in engaging with Houston on the versatile big man.
Source: <a href="https://theathletic.com/3087642/2022/01/24/rockets-trade-deadline-notebook-1-0-what-im-hearing-on-john-wall-eric-gordon-christian-wood-and-more/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Kelly Iko/The Athletic</a>
ANALYSIS:&nbsp;Iko also added that Eric Gordon has received interest from several teams as well. However, for both players, he notes that they are more likely to remain with the Rockets past the Feb. 10 trade deadline. Meanwhile, lower-usage veterans such as Daniel Theis, David Nwaba and D.J. Augustin are also generating interest, per Iko.

Eric Gordon has received interest from several teams as well, but both are likely to stay with Houston.

Report: Miami Heat pursuing Christian Wood in trade talks

I'm going to give you a moment to prepare your eye roll.
Go on. Take a few seconds. Get it together.&nbsp;
You ready?
[Clears throat]
Houston, you have a problem.
The losers of 15 straight games, the Rockets currently hold the worst record in the NBA at 1-16. Their 0-11 record on the road seems like a typo.
While it's understood that this was supposed to be ground zero of the post-Harden era, I'm not sure anybody expected things to look like this. Chief of among the "anybody" group: Rockets management.&nbsp;
Per Jake Fischer of Bleacher Report, head coach Stephen Silas is <a href="https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2950751-sources-houston-rockets-weighing-future-of-head-coach-stephen-silas" target="_blank" rel="noopener">firmly on the hot seat</a>. From Fischer:
Now, multiple sources with knowledge of the situation have indicated to B/R that Rockets brass are weighing the future of Stephen Silas, who may become the league's next coach to be terminated, following Luke Walton's exit in Sacramento last weekend.
It would be a tough break for Silas, whose first head coaching gig has been the literal opposite of what he expected.
He beat out candidates like Jeff Van Gundy for the job heading into last season, with the reward being James Harden and Russell Westbrook as a star backcourt duo. Instead, Westbrook was traded before the year began; Harden was later flipped to the Brooklyn Nets for a bounty of picks.
Shifting from "dark-horse contender" to "let's kick off the rebuild" isn't an easy transition. With the roster trending much younger &mdash; the primary goal being to foster the development of Jalen Green and Kevin Porter Jr. &mdash; it would make sense that the losses would pile up this season. Silas is not the&nbsp;reason the Rockets are awful right now.
It is fair, however, to acknowledge that he has a role to play in the rough start.
If you looked at the Rockets' roster heading into the season, you'd likely assume they'd be a poor defense and a below-average offense. A bad team, of course, but one in which you'd see a little more cohesion on the offensive side of the ball.
That just hasn't happened.
The Rockets rank dead last in offensive rating (97.3) despite having the most efficient shot profile in the NBA. Per PBP Stats, the Rockets (and Blazers) have an expected Effective Field Goal percentage of 55%; put another way, based on where they get their shots from, they should be blowing teams out of the water offensively.
Put&nbsp;another&nbsp;way: roughly 80% of the Rockets' shots come at the rim or behind the arc, easily tops in the league.
But this reminds me of last year's Timberwolves before the Chris Finch hire. They had a similar share of shots from fruitful areas of the floor, but&nbsp;how&nbsp;they got those shots &mdash; and who took those shots &mdash; made their profile fool's gold.
The Rockets have a double-whammy in this regard. Their starting backcourt of Porter and Green, when healthy, is a combined&nbsp;40 years old. On top of the two needing experience to effectively lead an offense, neither of them are natural playmakers.
On top of&nbsp;that,&nbsp;and this is where Silas deserves some blame, their offense is pretty static from a scheme standpoint. They're a drag-screen-or-bust group in early offense, with middle ball-screens (that devolve into isolations if they don't work) making up the largest chunk of their half-court attack.
They often empty a side to stress the defenders of the ball screen &mdash; and simplify reads for their young backcourt. With no real weak-side movement, or at the very least some decoy action to set up that empty corner action, you get a lot of possessions that look like this.
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There are hints of goodness in there. Go back to the Warriors game earlier in the month and you'll find some flavor. A Spain pick-and-roll here:
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A middle pick-and-roll, but with David Nwaba (love that guy) attempting to set up a flare behind him (don't mind the miss).
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More often than not, though, it's a bunch of bland. The young guys are often left to make a dollar out of 15 cents.
And about that youthful exuberance: they make mistakes. They try things. They turn the ball over, and boy, does this Rockets team turn it over. Their 18.2% turnover rate not only ranks last in the league by a wide margin, it's the worst mark since the Process Sixers back in the 2014-15 season (18.3%).
(That might be the biggest reason Silas doesn't trust Alperen Sengun with more minutes yet, though I &mdash; and probably 80% of Rocket fans &mdash; would argue his injection of randomness is worth it from a development&nbsp;and&nbsp;give-me-something-fun-to-watch standpoint.)
When the personnel isn't great, there's a limit to how effective you can be. Another benefit of empty corner pick-and-rolls, for example, is to generate an extra pocket of space; the Rockets kinda have&nbsp;to spam that to a degree because of the lack of shooters available. That isn't completely on Silas.
He certainly isn't helping himself right now, though. Playing Tate, Theis and Christian Wood together just hasn't worked out. Whatever benefit they're getting from the defensive insulation Tate and Theis provide is throughly erased by the lack of spacing the trio brings.&nbsp;
Houston's two most-played five-man linups <a href="https://www.nba.com/stats/lineups/advanced/?Season=2021-22&amp;SeasonType=Regular%20Season&amp;TeamID=1610612745" target="_blank" rel="noopener">feature those three</a>; those groupings have an 80.9 and 67.0 offensive rating respectively.
The third unit &mdash; Porter, Green, Eric Gordon, Tate and Wood &mdash; has a 106.0 Offensive Rating, and plus-13.3 Net Rating overall. It might&nbsp;be worth exploring that one a little more when everyone's available.&nbsp;
Defensively, it's easier to explain. They're an absolute mess at the point of attack with Porter, Green and D.J. Augustin logging most of the guard minutes. Porter and Green are even messier off the ball &mdash; typical young guy stuff &mdash; which further forces Silas into a tough spot.
There are defenders on this team that can help &mdash; Tate, Theis, Nwaba, KJ Martin (weak-side rim-protecting GAWD), and rooksters Josh Christopher (fiesty at the point of attack) and Usman Garuba &mdash; though none of them help the spacing issue in a real way.
In short (shut up), the Rockets don't have a Stephen Silas Problem. They have an Everything Problem. The organizational goal shifted underneath Silas' feet. The roster is young and flawed. Silas has failed to implement a system with any real juice, and his handling of the ill-fitting roster has been poor.
It's hard to imagine a Silas firing fixing everything, as a good chunk of this is out of his control. But there are certainly improvements that could be made. Drawing back to the Timberwolves example from earlier, if the Rockets feel their version of Finch is available on the market, it makes some sense to get that guy in place.
It would be an unfair shake for Silas, but such is life as an NBA coach.

Nekias Duncan breaks down what's going on in Houston, and why head coach Stephen Silas is on the hot seat in year two.

The Rockets' problems extend beyond Stephen Silas

Over the span of roughly six months, the Houston Rockets acquired a bevy of youthful talent. They traded for Kevin Porter Jr. in late January and during July&rsquo;s draft, spent four first-round picks on Jalen Green, Alperen Sengun, Usman Garuba and Josh Christopher. Once a team led by perennial MVP candidate James Harden and flanked by veterans, Houston has now oriented itself toward a rebuild.
Such as last season, <a href="https://www.basketballnews.com/stories/something-to-prove-kevin-porter-jr-at-point-guard-houston-rockets" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Porter will be granted reps as a lead creator</a>. Green, the second overall pick in this year&rsquo;s draft, surely will too. Maybe even Christopher will work on the ball in spurts. The sustainable utility of Sengun&rsquo;s post game will be explored. Garuba is heralded as a defensive stalwart whose offensive functionality needs crystalizing.&nbsp;
The Rockets&rsquo; hope is that all, or at least some combination, help shape the franchise&rsquo;s future in coming years. All of them, in varying manners, will benefit from the services of Christian Wood, Houston&rsquo;s best player and one who seems underappreciated, despite consecutive breakout seasons.&nbsp;
After inking a three-year, $41 million deal prior to 2020-21, he averaged 21.0 points, 9.6 rebounds and 1.2 blocks on 59.1% True Shooting (.514/.374/.631 split). Had he not sprained his right ankle in early February, there&rsquo;s a chance he would&rsquo;ve garnered deserved All-Star buzz. Prior to that injury, he averaged 22.0 points, 10.2 rebounds and 1.5 blocks on 63.4% True Shooting (.558/.421/.688 split). Sprained ankles are quite challenging to fully rehabilitate on the fly midseason, so there&rsquo;s a chance his production skews closer to pre-injury numbers, although that three-point clip seems like an outlier.
The basis of Wood&rsquo;s allure, both generally and in the context of accentuating Houston&rsquo;s young core, is his offensive versatility. He&rsquo;s a preeminent roller and popper in ball-screens, providing rare duality among big men across the league. According to Cleaning The Glass, he ranked in the 86th percentile at the rim (76%) and 60th percentile on above-the-break triples (37%) last season. A year earlier, he finished in the 89th and 80th percentiles, respectively.
He&rsquo;s a bouncy, coordinated finisher and keenly spots when to slip screens with the proper angles or cut as an off-ball cog. As one of just five centers (Joel Embiid, Karl-Anthony Towns, Nikola Vucevic and Nikola Jokic are the others) to launch at least three long balls and convert them at 37% or better in 2020-21, the threat of Wood&rsquo;s jumper spurs consistent closeouts from defenses. That provides avenues to leverage his fluidity and slithery, distinguished ball-handling while operating inside the arc.&nbsp;
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There might not be a center who covers all three bases in ball-screens &ndash; rolling, popping and driving &ndash; better than Wood these days (well, perhaps Jokic). He is that valuable offensively, and pick-and-roll acumen is not the extent of his equity. Only Jokic, Towns and Embiid are definitively superior offensive centers. Vucevic has a case, but it is not inarguable by any means. That sort of presence for three 21-and-under creators in Porter, Green and Christopher is such a luxury for their growth. It&rsquo;s an uncommon windfall in many rebuilding circumstances, especially in what will be Houston&rsquo;s first full year of its youth movement.&nbsp;
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The dude touts legit self-creation chops, parlaying his dexterity and mobility on closeouts into face-up scoring. He&rsquo;s even netted 20-of-54 (37%) pull-up threes the last two seasons as a periodically mystifying wrinkle for a 6-foot-11 center. Despite a slender 215-pound frame, he&rsquo;s moderately comfortable playing through contact and converting funky, off-balance shots as a driver with delicate body control and feathery touch. Give him a mismatch and he&rsquo;ll cook, gliding past plodding bigs or overwhelming smaller, ill-equipped wings.&nbsp;
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The ability to generate mismatches, and their frequency, in the pick-and-roll could be central to Houston&rsquo;s relative offensive success, both for Wood&rsquo;s individual profits and the signifier it represents for wide-eyed ball-handlers. If Porter and Green (and Christopher) establish the proper cadence and discernment as initiators, they&rsquo;ll drastically benefit from Wood&rsquo;s gravity and talents. His rolling and popping will carve openings if applied correctly and a release valve will consistently be available if the set transpires smoothly.
Together, those sorts of actions could induce preferable matchups for the initiator and finisher. Their success, or lack thereof, might help illuminate the developmental progress of Porter and Green&rsquo;s creation decision-making as it pertains to the manipulation of screens, delivery of passes and balance of shooting vs. facilitating.
Wood serving as a connector doesn&rsquo;t just have to occur directly with the young guards. He can merely drift into the background to space the floor, firing and slashing when the ball rotates his way or darting in for cuts. The Rockets&rsquo; offense will certainly depend on him considerably. Yet empowering the young dudes to gauge their advantage-creation threshold at this juncture and how they&rsquo;re equipped to set up the big fella as a result seems prudent if the franchise GPS is prioritizing a long-term destination.
Another means of forging their maturation as lead creators is utilizing Wood&rsquo;s comfort flowing through off-ball screens. Houston drew up a number of flare screens for him last season, which seems likely to continue this year. Rather than largely having Porter, Green or Christopher stand atop the key and await its unfolding, it makes sense to incorporate a counter or weak-side action to let them sift through various options.
This doesn&rsquo;t have to occur every time, but mixing them in to avoid autopilot decision-making and actually emulate the responsibilities of an offensive engine could prove beneficial. Regardless, though, Wood offers another path to complement Houston&rsquo;s cornerstones via his versatility, and it further emphasizes his multifaceted scoring package.
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An overreliance on Wood will be detrimental to all involved. He is not ready to be some domineering offensive nucleus, nor would that fashion a favorable ecosystem for Porter, Green or Christopher (or Sengun). At the very least, the former two should be thrust into roles that test the depths of their offensive value in differing outlets, both as fire-starters and play-finishers.&nbsp;
Asking Wood to constantly toggle across all those roles would limit their reps and extend him too far. He is not a particularly impactful passer, struggling with processing speed and vision, which leaves him behind the defense and chasing reads no longer available. While he does play through physicality and contact, it&rsquo;s sometimes too much for his wiry build and stymies his individual scoring. That&rsquo;d be less of a concern if he was a better passer, but <a href="https://streamable.com/qi0dv4" target="_blank" rel="noopener">those flashes of intrigue</a> are blanketed by turnovers resulting from delayed court mapping and inhibit the ceiling of his usage load.&nbsp;
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One of the more vital dynamics to effectively scale during a rebuild is how much to lean into the youth vs. surrounding them with auxiliary, well-established talent. The Rockets had to navigate that in real-time last season and the same phenomenon confronts them this year. They&rsquo;re welcoming an assortment of promising players to the Lone Star State, while already rostering the likes of Wood, Jae&rsquo;Sean Tate, Danuel House, David Nwaba and others (remember: auxiliary).&nbsp;
Some of them will likely have new homes by midseason. Wood, though, should remain around. He is very good, existing on the fringes of All-Star conversations, and offers an assortment of skills to aid those who figure prominently into Houston&rsquo;s plans. His 2020-21 campaign was overshadowed by the Harden trade and the team&rsquo;s subsequent struggles. Maybe the latter will bury him in the news cycle again. But there he&rsquo;ll be, hammering dunks, splashing threes and exemplifying the equity of very good players alongside enticing prospects.

Christian Wood had consecutive breakout seasons. Now, his strong play and versatility will make life much easier for the Rockets' young core.

Christian Wood's offensive versatility will benefit Houston's core

Georges Niang tied a career high with 24 points and the NBA-leading Utah Jazz beat the short-handed Houston Rockets 124-116 on Saturday night to reach 50 victories.
Jordan Clarkson scored 21 points, and Bojan Bogdanovic added 20 &mdash; his seventh straight 20-point performance &mdash; for the Jazz.
Utah finished 5-0 on its homestand despite missing All-Stars Donovan Mitchell and Mike Conley again.
&ldquo;We just had to really fight through mentally. And just keep pushing ... that&rsquo;s how we stuck out this win, but I ain&rsquo;t going to lie to you: This season has been grueling and tiring, but it is what it is and we came here to work,&rdquo; Clarkson said.
Niang took advantage of some post-ups in the paint and was a sharpshooter from beyond the arc. Starting just his eighth game, Niang scored 10 points in the third quarter and his 3-pointer with 2:50 left in the period gave Utah its largest lead, 96-75.
&ldquo;I know he&rsquo;s gonna be at the right spot at the right time,&rdquo; Utah's Joe Ingles said of Niang. &ldquo;If I get in the lane and I key to the corner, he&rsquo;s going to be somewhere in that area and he will definitely shoot it so it&rsquo;s a good look for us, when he&rsquo;s out there playing like that with confidence.&rdquo;
The usually mild-mannered Niang was so fired up, he drew a technical for taunting after draining a 3 that tied his career high of 24 early in the final period. He was 6 of 8 on 3-pointers.
&ldquo;I usually hold my emotions, and I just happened to lose my cool. That&rsquo;s not who I am or aspire to be,&rdquo; Niang said. &ldquo;I thought he had brushed me in the face on purpose. So I told him that he was too late, like, he wasn&rsquo;t going to get to my shot anyway.&rdquo;
Rudy Gobert had 13 points and 14 rebounds for the Jazz.
The Rockets have lost five straight and 20 of their past 23 games.
&ldquo;They fought hard and they battled. Another hard-fought game just like last night. Again, I was super proud of this group,&rdquo; coach Stephen Silas said.
Khyri Thomas and KJ Martin each had career highs of 27 for Houston. Thomas has scored 47 in two games with the Rockets, and Martin marked his third straight 20-point game and fourth of his career.
&ldquo;I just look at it as an opportunity to go out and play basketball. I love to do it, so I just come out every night and compete as hard as I can,&rdquo; Martin said.
Both teams were playing the second night of back-to-back, which led to some sloppy play. The Jazz improved to 12-2 on zero days rest.
The undermanned Rockets used a starting lineup with Martin at 6-foot-7 as the tallest player to face the 7-foot-1 Gobert. Danuel House Jr. and D.J. Augustin moved off the injury report and onto the court for first time in weeks to give Houston eight available players.
TIP-INS
Rockets: Injury list was voluminous: Avery Bradley (personal), Sterling Brown (knee), Dant&eacute; Exum (calf), Eric Gordon (groin); David Nwaba (wrist), Kelly Olynyk (ankle), Kevin Porter Jr (ankle), John Wall (hamstring); D.J. Wilson (health protocols), and Christian Wood (ankle). ... Houston used its 40th different starting lineup in 68 games. ... Jae&rsquo;Sean Tate was assessed a flagrant-1 for hitting Gobert in the face in the third quarter.
Jazz: Clarkson has made a 3 in 90 straight games. ... Utah outscored Houston in the paint, 56-46. &hellip; The Jazz swept the season series with the Rockets, 3-0. ... Ingles got a technical foul with 2:10 remaining and then left the game.
UP NEXT
Rockets: At Portland on Monday night.
Jazz: At Golden State on Monday night.
___
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Utah finished 5-0 on its homestand despite missing All-Stars Donovan Mitchell and Mike Conley again.