[Ringer Article] Booster Rockets: How Off-Ball Shooting Fuels Houston’s Offense

https://www.theringer.com/nba/2018/2/13/17005988/houston-rockets-offense-explained

Booster Rockets: How Off-Ball Shooting Fuels Houston’s Offense
There’s only one ball, but luckily Eric Gordon, Ryan Anderson, and Gerald Green don’t need the rock to light up the box score
By Jared Dubin Feb 13, 2018, 9:57am ESTSHARE
Getty Images/Ringer illustration
“I know what to do,” Luc Mbah a Moute says, before considering whether he should really be blabbing about how to stop the Houston Rockets when they run a high pick-and-roll for James Harden. “But I’m on the team now. I can’t really tell you.”

The Rockets are 42–13 and winners of their past eight. They have the NBA’s second-best offense, just behind Golden State, with whom they are in neck-and-neck competition for the first seed in the Western Conference. Like the Warriors, Houston poses unsolvable problems for a defense. But where Golden State is a blur of transition pace, ball movement, and cutting, Houston’s offense is more languid, perfectly placing sharpshooters in the exact right place, at the exact right time, to take advantage of the opposing team’s obsession with Harden and Chris Paul...

more at the link (imo a really good read)