James Harden will miss the Houston Rockets with a thigh injury for at least two weeks. But the Texans still have an ace up their sleeve in Chris Paul. The Point Guard will now have to shoulder a lot of responsibility. He has proven that he can do it for years.
It just doesn’t want to rest at the Houston Rockets. In five games, the Texans lost to the Golden State Warriors in five games at a time, losing their place in the sun. On New Year’s Eve, MVP candidate James Harden also injured his thigh in a 2OT victory against the Los Angeles Lakers.
The team announced that the shooting guard will be absent for at least two weeks. Only then Harden is examined again. However, the likelihood of Harden returning immediately is not too high: a second-degree rupture of the muscle fibre was found. In the worst case, it could take up to six weeks before the beard is back on the court.
At first glance, it’s a hard blow for the already thin rockets:”It’s going to be tough for us,”Trevor Ariza moaned,”He’s been on the field ever since I’ve been here. So it will be a real challenge for us without him.”
But Harden is not the only Rockets player who is struggling with injuries. Luc Mbah a Moute continues to have problems with his shoulder, Clint Capela has been struggling with heel pain for a while and missed five games because of a facial fracture. Chris Paul didn’t return from his adductor problems until after Christmas and missed 17 games.
But CP3 will be the most important. The playmaker joined Los Angeles Clippers Houston in the summer after six years to take on less responsibility. Now the 32-year-old is in demand again and can prove that he still has the level of the last few years and is one of the best point guards in the league.
So far, he has not had to show this due to the brilliance of Harden, even though Point God has even better on/off statistics than the MVP candidate. Against the Lakers this was already evident when CP3 scored 15 points in overtime and Houston contributed to the win when Harden was already injured.
“Rockets coach Mike D’ Antoni then went on to analyse his determination to win:” Only a few players can simply say,’ We won’t lose. Chris is one of them.”
This was also urgently needed after some defeats against play-off teams (Thunder, Celtics) or the bitter bankruptcy in Washington. The team seemed tired and relied too much on Harden. He scored 51 points (Clippers, Lakers) twice, but the team still lost. The ball didn’t run as expected, there was a lot more iso-ball and the throws weren’t as open anymore as at the beginning of the season.
However, there were also no valid options. D’ Antoni has little faith in the players at the end of the bank and cut down his rotations to some eight players – also due to lack of alternatives for the injured players. When the coach spared the 38-year-old Nene, the Chinese Zhou Qi was allowed to try his hand at Washington and played catastrophic five minutes in which he threw two free throws straight at the ring, airballed a threesome and was taken on the poster by Tomas Satoransky.
With such thin material, it was no surprise that General Manager Daryl Morey conjured up Gerald Green from the hat. The forward provides a little bit of depth and could relieve the strained wing players a little bit. Against Washington, he already indicated this with 20 points. Trevor Ariza and Ryan Anderson, in particular, had to break away for many, many minutes and could thus take a little breather.
So it was no surprise that the number of throws recently dropped a little bit (last ten games: 44.6 percent FG, 35.6 percent Downtown). Ariza had an average time of over 40 minutes and Anderson often had to defend bigs without Capela, which is obviously not one of his strengths.
At least the game plan is pretty good with Houston. Of course, the summit meeting with the Warriors (Friday, 2 a. m. live on DAZN) is imminent, but otherwise the next two weeks will be against four opponents with a negative balance. In addition, there are solvable tasks against Portland and Detroit.
So the team has a little leeway to find a rhythm without hardening. The numbers speak for Paul anyway. If he stands on the field at the end of the game, the rockets have a 16-1 record, without him Houston stands at 7-11. It could therefore hit the rockets much worse.
Maybe this break is also something positive for the beard. Last season Harden played all 82 games and admitted after the playoffs that he was exhausted. Now he can charge the battery a little bit in the middle of the season – without any worries, even if his application for the MVP would suffer if it were to be cancelled for more than two weeks.
But the Rockets are pursuing a bigger goal: The Golden State Warriors are to be attacked in the playoffs, as Texas emphasizes remarkably often. In the meantime, they have the perfect insurance for the loss of hards they never had before. She is called Chris Paul.