James Harden, Rockets go ice cold in blowout loss to Clippers, who expose Houston's lack of a Plan B

This is one of the vulnerabilities that will always exist with the way Houston has constructed its roster

Since the Houston Rockets traded Clint Capela and officially committed to playing super small, they've gone 7-4 in exactly one month of action, and they've been better than that record would indicate. One loss was to the Suns without Russell Westbrook, while another came against the Jazz on a 30-foot, contested, fallaway buzzer-beater by Bojan Bogdanovic. 

Then came the Clippers, who brought the Rockets back to earth with a 120-105 beating on Thursday night that was, in fact, worse than that final score would indicate. Now everyone's overreacting. The Rockets got exposed. The same thing happened when the Bucks got blasted by the Heat on Monday and Giannis Antetokounmpo was held to 13 points. 

As I wrote about that Bucks game, one loss is obviously insignificant in the grand scheme, and by and large, there is very little information to ascertain from a regular-season game as it pertains to how a playoff series may or may not go. But that doesn't mean they're completely devoid of significance. 

Yes, if a team can, theoretically, replicate the swarming defense Miami threw at Giannis, with an individual defender as capable as Bam Adebayo anchoring the attack, Milwaukee, given its reliance on a superstar that still has one major hole in his game, could find itself in a battle for lack of other elite options. This is not likely. But this is feasible, and the Miami game simply reinforced a quiet concern many Bucks skeptics harbor. 

What the Clippers did to the Rockets is different. For starters, the Bucks are clearly the best team in the East. They have a leash that Houston lacks. When it comes to beating a team like the Clippers, the Rockets need everything to go right. At any point in time, they could simply go cold from three, and they'll be done. On Thursday, the Rockets missed 20 straight 3-pointers at one point and finished the game 7-for-42 from deep. 

If that happens in a playoff game, regardless of who they're playing, the Rockets will lose. If it happens for a series, they're going home. That's the thing about this 3-point revolution: The math always adds up over the long term, but playoff series can be short. James Harden, for instance, has gone 7-for-38 from 3-point range over his last three games. If that happens over a three-game stretch in the playoffs, he won't won't have three more games to even those numbers out. He'll be fishing. 

So that's the first Rockets' vulnerability. They can go cold at any point, and they don't have a Plan B. They refuse to look for shots in the mid-range. They aren't going to put the clamps on you defensively and win that way (the Clippers got anywhere they wanted and beat them up inside). They only have two guys who can get to the rim, and one of them is pretty much always being double-teamed. No matter how ice cold Harden is, he's going to keep shooting his seven-dribble step-back 3-pointers. 

Westbrook, on the other hand, has all but cut 3-pointers entirely out of his attack. He's using the double-teams thrown at Harden and the open lane created by Capela's absence as a runway to the rim, but the Clippers have three elite perimeter defenders in Kawhi Leonard, Paul George and Patrick Beverley. They don't have to double team as desperately. 

Behind that, the Cllppers were forming something of a bubble around the paint with their help defenders -- not so much a zone, but a soft man defense against wing shooters of their selection, one of which was Westbrook. They'll let him shoot all day. He didn't take the bait, only taking two 3-pointers for the game (0-for-2), but that runway to the rim he's been enjoying? That was surrounded. He forced his way to 29 points but it took him 27 shots to get there. 

Like the Rockets as a whole, Westbrook doesn't have a Plan B. He has to get to the rim. Plain and simple. He might make a few 3-pointers here and there, get hot for one game, but he's not going to do it for an entire series, and what the Clippers showed is that the elite defensive teams can in fact shut down, or at least significantly disrupt, his Plan A. 

That's been the misnomer about this Rockets small-ball hysteria. They've made it seem like defenses are powerless to cover all their shooters without leaving the lane wide open for Westbrook and Harden. That theory holds true against most teams, but the Rockets aren't trying to beat most teams. They're trying to beat the best teams. 

One loss to the Clippers doesn't mean Houston is incapable of playing with the best of the best. Since the Capela trade, they've beaten the Lakers at full strength and the Celtics twice. But the Clippers game is a reminder that the Rockets are the ones playing uphill. They're the ones who need to bury a bunch of 3-pointers to close the defensive and rebounding gap that exists against more well-rounded teams. If they don't do it, they're finished. If they do, they're dangerous. It's really as simple as that.