The Robert Covington trade shows the Rockets are all-in on small ball

Fourteen and a half years ago, Mike D’Antoni needed to find an answer after his most notable big man suffered a serious knee injury. The Phoenix Suns’ title chances seemed toast without the one player who complemented their array of perimeter shooting with dominant inside play. Desperate times forced D’Antoni into a difficult choice: be a lesser version of the team they hoped to be, or be daring and push the envelope even further?

His answer was unambiguous. The league’s most stylistically unique team was about to become even more stylistically unique. They would downsize even further and double down on their identity.

“You know what, we have to find a way to score 110 points,” D’Antoni told his Suns players on the day Amar’e Stoudemire’s knee injury was announced, according to Jack McCallum’s :07 Seconds Or Less book on the 2005-06 Suns. “We have plenty here to do it, but we got to find a different way than we did last year. So let’s band together and go bust somebody’s ass and get it done.”

Those Suns didn’t win the title, but they won 54 regular-season games, shattered three-point records, and uncovered hidden gems like Boris Diaw, Raja Bell, and Leandro Barbosa. They fell just two games short of the Finals despite a litany of injuries that necessitated a tight playing rotation and a midseason pickup of Tim Thomas out of desperation. They were too small. They were too thin. They weren’t good enough to build on their breakout 2004-05 campaign with Stoudemire. But rather than accept their lot in life, they turned those shortcomings into advantages and came much closer than they otherwise would have.

D’Antoni is now a lame-duck Houston Rockets coach on the last year of his contract, championing an isolation-heavy style in Houston that he jokingly referred to as “16 seconds or more” in a Bleacher Report feature. Clint Capela, D’Antoni’s most notable big man throughout this run, is nowhere close to the player Stoudemire was.

But when Capela went down with a nagging foot injury, D’Antoni channeled the same spirit he once found in Phoenix all those years ago. He started 6’5 P.J. Tucker at center, and in fact stopped playing centers altogether. He pushed the envelope further instead of playing more conventionally. So far, it’s worked: Houston is 10-1 with Capela sidelined this season and has won four in a row without him.

Now, they are in even better position to assert their new identity. Houston traded Capela, their 2020 first-round pick, and a series of end-of-bench filler players in a complicated four-team deal that netted them Robert Covington, an elite defensive player and high-volume three-point shooter. In doing so, the Rockets gave their stylistic revolution more of a chance to succeed and re-emerged as a dangerous Western Conference opponent.

Small ball was working. Now, it’ll work better.

It’s tempting to bash the Rockets for giving up their only center of note in a conference that now includes Anthony Davis, Nikola Jokic, and Rudy Gobert. Why commit to small ball now, when the Warriors are no longer the league’s final boss? Why downsize when more teams have found ways to play a small-ball style with bigger players?

The answer is simple: small ball was a deadly weapon for Houston already. Lineups with Tucker playing center have scored nearly 119 points per 100 possessions this season, with an overall plus/minus of +4.4 per 100, according to Cleaning the Glass. Lineups with Capela, on the other hand, only put up 110.3 points per 100 possessions with a +1.7 net differential. This is in contrast to last season, when Capela-anchored lineups scored at roughly the same rate as Tucker-anchored ones.

Why the change? Two related factors: the Rockets’ continuing shift away from pick-and-roll play, plus the addition of Russell Westbrook. Capela’s best success occurred when the high ball screen was the foundation of Houston’s offense. He was deadly catching lob passes and had surprisingly nimble feet in short rolls. But the Rockets have slowly but surely tilted more of their offense toward Harden’s one-on-one scoring ability, believing (correctly) that using Capela to screen simply puts more defenders in Harden’s way.

As The Ringer’s Dan Devine wrote:

Twenty-one percent of their possessions were finished by a pick-and-roll participant last season, and that’s down to 15.5 percent this season, with Houston ranking last in the league in percentage of plays finished by pick-and-roll ball handlers and roll men. As the Rockets have moved away from his bread-and-butter play, Capela’s production on it has waned, too: He’s gone from the 91st percentile in points scored per pick-and-roll possession finished two seasons ago, to the 65th percentile last season, to the 50th percentile this season.

If Capela’s not setting screens, he must be stationed along the baseline waiting dump-off passes. This forced him to finish more often from a standstill position, which is not his strength due to his weak upper body and stone hands.

Swapping Westbrook for Paul compounded the problem. With two non-shooters on the floor instead of just one, teams started trapping Harden at half court and taking their chances otherwise. Any gravity that’d otherwise come from a Westbrook drive or a Capela rim-roll was canceled out by the other’s lack of shooting range.

The combination of Westbrook and Capela with Harden tanked Houston’s front-line offense. The Rockets scored less than 106 points per 100 possessions with Westbrook, Harden, and Capela on the floor together this season, according to Cleaning The Glass. That’s more than 14 points per 100 possessions worse than lineups featuring the two all-star guards without Capela. Simply taking Capela out of the game opens wide driving lanes for Westbrook and alleviates the traps that Harden has increasingly seen this season.

In a vacuum, Capela’s offensive skill set is useful. He should look much better in Atlanta playing with the pick-and-roll heavy Trae Young. But this Rockets team — one that needs to maximize their significant long-term investment in Westbrook — had little use for Capela’s strengths anymore and were getting pulverized by his weaknesses. Swapping those out for Covington, a floor-spacer that’ll yield the lane to Westbrook and Harden, makes Houston’s offensive pieces fit much more effectively.

But what about the defense? Enter Robert Covington.

Concerns about Houston’s defensive aptitude in the wake of losing Capela are understandable. He was their best shot-blocker and rebounder, plus his ability to defend smaller players was at one time crucial to the Rockets’ switch-heavy system. Who guards Anthony Davis and Nikola Jokic now, you might ask?

Those concerns are overblown. Capela did marginally improve Houston’s defense this year, but he wasn’t stopping those guys either. His once-elite switch ability has sunk to merely useful as teams have pushed the envelope on floor spacing. Most of Capela’s defensive value to Houston came simply because he was so much better than the overmatched centers or pint-sized wing players that would replace him in the lineup.

Robert Covington is neither of those things. He’s listed at 6’7 and 211 pounds, but often plays much bigger than that. He’s an excellent perimeter defender and an even better help defender that loves to play passing lanes and sneak in for critical steals.

You wouldn’t ask him to defend the best post players, but his ability to dig down and help off his man will close the space those stars need to take advantage of a mismatch. Covington may need to switch more often in Houston’s system, but his help defense is still valuable — arguably more valuable — in a swarm-and-recover setting.

Houston’s defense hasn’t been great with Capela off the floor this season, but it should improve with Covington sliding into the extra wing spot currently being occupied by the much smaller Danuel House, Ben McLemore, or Austin Rivers. The samples are small, but consider that Tucker-at-center lineups that feature House are getting crushed on defense this season while holding their own when a different wing plays instead. Replacing House’s spot with an outstanding wing defender in Covington will make a major difference.

But can small-ball really work these days? Don’t the Rockets need a center?

It depends on what one means by “working.” If one simply defines “working” as winning a championship, this trade probably won’t succeed. Houston still has significant structural problems, poor depth, and a superstar pairing that’s not optimal. It’ll still be a tall order getting through second-tier contenders like Utah, Denver, and Dallas, much less the two Los Angeles teams. Houston’s long-term future still looks cloudy after surrendering so many picks in the Paul-Westbrook swap, and losing another first-rounder in this deal isn’t ideal.

But if the goal is simply to give the team a better chance than they had before, committing to small-ball by swapping Capela for Covington is a major win. Houston has already been much better with Tucker at center this season, and that’s before sliding a perfect fit like Covington into this new approach. Plus, if Houston needs emergency size to replace Capela, they can find another big man to play spot minutes on the buyout market or with the extra $12 million they can reportedly gain by further expanding the deal before Thursday’s trade deadline.

(In practice, this is actually more like $5.8 million because of the luxury tax, which owner Tilman Fertitta almost certainly won’t pay. Jeff Siegel has a more detailed explanation for how Houston can use this money).

The Rockets were already pot-committed to the present before this move. Keeping Capela and playing more conventionally wasn’t working. But instead of accepting their lot in life, they doubled down on their new identity. It may not lead to a title, but if the 2005-06 Suns are any indication, it’ll get them a lot closer than staying the course would have.

The Mike D’Antoni of 14 years ago would be proud.