Milwaukee Bucks Game Preview: Jan. 18 at Houston Rockets
By Ti Windisch
Major Key For Milwaukee: Defend The Arc
This one may be obvious, but there’s no key more major when playing the Houston Rockets: defending the three-point line is absolutely essential. Houston averages 40 attempted threes per game, which leads the NBA.
The Rockets shoot 37.1 percent on those threes, which is a really strong percentage considering how many of them they shoot. All those threes open up tons of space for Houston inside–although the Rockets are last in attempted two-point shots per game, they’re first in two-point percentage.
That’s the recipe for an efficient offense, and indeed Houston is second in points scored per game and third in offensive rating among NBA teams this season. The Rockets shoot, then they shoot again, then they shoot some more, then James Harden does something cool, and then they shoot again.
Teams that live by the three sometimes die by the three as well. Houston is 2-4 in games where the team shoots below 30 percent from the arc, and 0-3 in games where the team makes a single-digit amount of three-point shots.
It’s a testament to the good looks the Rockets get that there are so few of those kinds of games for this team. The best way to defend against three-point shooting teams is to stop them from shooting them, and not many teams have bottled up the Rockets this year.