Rockets LaunchPod
Consistent inconsistency: Is it time to reset expectations in Houston?
09 Jan 2026
Chapter 1: What led to the Rockets' inconsistent performance this season?
Rockets fans, welcome to the Rockets LaunchPod, an exclusive podcast from the home of the Rockets. Sports Talk 790. Red Nation, get ready. The Rockets LaunchPod starts now. Welcome aboard.
Welcome to the Rockets LaunchPod, as always presented by Clutch Fans and with support from Sports Talk 790, the official flagship radio station of your Houston Rockets. As always, we are your host. I'm Ben DuBose. He's Paolo Alves. You can follow me on social media at Ben DuBose and Paolo at PaoloAlvesNBA. And you can also read my work at USA Today's RocketsWire and over on the Clutch Fans blog.
So today is Friday, the 9th of January. Happy New Year to everyone listening. This is our first full show since the calendar flipped to 2026. So I think we're allowed to say that, at least I hope we are. Unfortunately, it has not been a great start to the new year for the Rockets.
Though they've been a moderate to heavy favorite in each of the four games they played, we had mentioned in the previous pod that this is a very favorable part of the schedule, but the Rockets are just 2-2 in the four games they played to date, and they're also going to be without star big man Alperin Shugun for at least a few more days because he sprained his right ankle.
This week, the Rockets have had two games go right down to the wire. In one case, they had the basketball gods smiling upon them. In the second case, they did not. Monday against the Suns, Kevin Durant hit the dagger three with a second left.
But then Wednesday in Portland, what would have been a game-winning tip shot by Tari Eason was determined on replay review to have been a split second after the buzzer. So the Rockets took a one-point loss. And with that loss, they fall to 22-12 and all the way to the number six spot in the Western Conference standings, though we should note that it's very tight between two and six.
So there's a lot of room to climb the standings rapidly if you can just stack some wins together. And theoretically, you can start that tonight with the rematch against the Trailblazers in that same building. With that said, I'm struggling to buy in on this idea of a winning streak because they just haven't stacked wins in a while.
And to me, the biggest takeaway from these last few games, and particularly the two against the Suns and the Trailblazers, is that the Rockets just shouldn't have let each game go down to the wire in the first place. Yet they just did, and it's not really a one-off.
You know, if you look at any one game out of 82 in isolation, you can always find some fluky things that should correct as you get a larger sample. You know, the Trailblazers game, the Rockets shot 8 of 36 from 3. They were literally the best team in the NBA at three-point shooting accuracy through a big chunk of December, and now they're literally dead last in January. So that should correct.
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Chapter 2: How is Alperen Sengun's absence affecting the Rockets' offense?
My question for you at this point, Paolo, after nine and eight in the last 17 games, is there still a path for this team to become dominant in the regular season? Or are we at a point where we just sort of accept that, you know, this is who they are and maybe put our eggs in the basket of hoping they put it together when it matters most?
Sort of like, you know, Dirk Nowitzki did for a 57-win Dallas team back in 2011 when he was starting to age. Maybe a 37-year-old KD can follow that template in 26. I guess the bottom line and my question for you, Paolo, have these past few weeks changed your expectations at all, at least in terms of the regular season?
Because at least for me, it feels like the floor is a decent bit lower, even if the ceiling is still what it was.
Well, I can't say they haven't, because if you asked me a couple of weeks back, I might have said something crazy like, oh, I think this team's going to win 60 games. And I don't think that anymore. However, my kind of delta in opinion is not, I think, as large as yours and as large as a lot of people's on Twitter.
And, you know, some of this might be, and I'll be honest up front, if the game's at 3 a.m., which I think is a 9 p.m. start for y'all, I'm not watching. Like, I work full time. I can't do it anymore. I did it for a few years. It just ruins the entire week. So, and it seems like we are, and this is, you know, just the weird lazy fine patterns. It seems like we seem to be worse at those games.
Then we are at the normal games. I mean, I'll watch a 3 a.m. game if it's like Friday or Saturday, right? But in the other days, I won't. And it just seems like I wake up, the first thing I do, I go check the result. And it seems like we've lost more times than not when I have to do that. This is not, you know, a stat because I haven't checked it, but it certainly feels that way.
So just to say that my spirits might be a little bit inflated compared to someone who has watched those games as well. So moving on from what is barely analysis to what might actually qualify as it, I do think that this team is still a 55-win team.
I think there are a few things that have worked into or a combination of a few factors that have led to, you know, this shaky kind of 500 stretch of basketball that Rokas has been on. And it's been a group of things, right? We haven't had Fred from very early on, and then we didn't have Tari, and we didn't have Lorian Finney-Smith, and that's three key rotation players on a team.
And, well, if you go to any team and you take away three key rotation players, they won't be as good, or they won't be on a 60-win base. Even the Thunder look mortal nowadays. And then now that we've got Antari and Darvin Smith back, Darvin Smith hasn't been, you know, that good. He's been good on defense. He's helped there, but he hasn't been able to shoot the ball yet.
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Chapter 3: What criticisms are being directed at Reed Sheppard and Jabari Smith Jr.?
It was never really sustainable for Reed Shepard to be a 47% three-point shooter. And I know we'll talk about Reed a little bit later on, but that has died down. And our offense is no longer as absolutely supersonic as it was before to cover up our defensive mistakes and our lack of defensive intensity.
But to be fair, our defensive intensity has picked up and our rebounding, or at least those lapses that we used to have in rebounding, especially defensively, do seem to, with Dorian Phoenix and Torrey being back, have gone away for a little bit.
Some of it might be because Steven Adams is starting in place of Shane Moon, which is obviously going to make your defense better and your offense a little worse. But we look at the past few games, it's 103 to the Blazers, 97 to the Suns, 110 to the Mavs, and 96 to the Nets. And before that, there's the Pacers game that was a blowout. So this to say, you know, the defense seems to have picked up.
But, and I think this is my, I guess my takeaway, it seems like even though the defense has picked up, the Rockets still do miss having a bit of an enforcer. And the Rockets had two last season with Fred Van Vliet and Dylan Brooks. and now they have none on defense.
And we do have good defensive players that care, that work hard, but there's a gap between that and having someone on the court that's constantly demanding you to play great defense to other guys on the team, right? Not saying they don't care, not saying Shingwon doesn't care, not saying KD doesn't care at times.
I mean, I think, I mean, for what I expected, he's been better defensively than what I expected. For Rick Shepard, same thing, right? Even Aaron Holiday, who's a decent defender, was a better defender last season, if you ask me. You know, even Jabari, who's an okay defender, I think he gets elevated if there's someone in his ear, you know, constantly bringing that intensity.
And I do think that Rockets lost some of their floor. with the KD trade, right? And that floor came from Dylan Brooks and it's even more noticeable because Fred isn't there. Not necessarily for what everybody talks about, which is they don't have a point guard. No, it's more on the defensive end. That makes more of a difference.
And I think that's what's that edge defensively in terms of influencing others, not necessarily as governing the Rockets, governing their own, each player governing their own effort. I don't think that that's a problem. I don't think Amens had effort problems or Tari or Jabari for that matter.
I don't think our main defensive guys have had effort issues, but there's no one bringing the standard up for everybody else. And it is a pretty big step for a young player to go from, okay, I'm going to be a really good defender by myself to, okay, I'm going to do my job and be there and exert energy, you know, demanding that from other players.
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Chapter 4: Could recent inconsistency lead to a trade before the deadline?
But everyone's favorite whipping boy early in the season, Amin Thompson, that is no longer the case. Since the start of December in 17 games, he's averaging right at 20 points, 8 rebounds, 5 assists per game, shooting almost 56% overall. So Amin is getting better. It's pretty clear that slow start to the year from an efficiency perspective was an outlier.
He's back to that guy he was all of last season and perhaps... The slow start is just, you know, I've talked about it in the past. He's a very unique layer in terms of his model. And it just takes him, I think, a little bit of time to get used to the NBA speed and physicality and finishing through the contact that he absorbs on a lot of his drives because he is limited as a shooter.
Bottom line, Amin has been very, very good. Even if he's not a traditional point guard, I think the bottom line, he's a very good player. And so no one is talking, or at least they shouldn't be, badly about Amin Thompson anymore. Since the start of December, he's been really good. Tari Eason, since getting promoted to the starting lineup around Christmas, he's looked good.
Defensively, I was really encouraged by the work he did on Devin Booker late in that game against the Suns. He seems to be happily accepting the glue guy role alongside the high-usage guys like KD, Amin, Shingun when he's able to play. And, you know, some of the dip offensively is certainly due to not having Alperin Shingun, who's probably your best playmaker. So we do have to keep stating that.
But I think in terms of the criticism... We mentioned a lot of the guys are playing well. The veterans that are sort of low ceiling, you're Josh Akogi, Dorian Finney-Smith, Stephen Adams. Well, Stephen Adams has a higher ceiling, but offensively, he is what he is. He's not someone you're going to run offense through. Aaron Holiday.
Those vets, I sort of put them in the same bucket at Clint Capella as well as they do what they do. You're not going to have too many highs or too many lows other than the games that Stephen set out with his own ankle injury. Your defense did fall off a little bit, but that's to be expected. Just as Alper and Shungun is your floor raiser on offense, Stephen Adams is your floor raiser on defense.
And the ideal, of course, is to have them both so that you have a high floor on both sides of the ball. The last few weeks, it's been one or the other, and that explains some of the volatility. But in terms of the individuals, the two guys who are getting the most criticism are Jabari Smith Jr. and Reed Shepard.
And I'm surprised that it's as close as it is between those two guys, because when you look at the macro rather than the micro, I think it's pretty clear that Reed is the bigger issue. And that shouldn't come as a huge shock. He's just 21 years old. He's year two. So there's going to be a learning curve.
And he was due to regress some after starting as hot as he did through that opening 17-game stretch. But the outrage I'm seeing, at least on my social media feed directed at Jabari, Look, you can say Jabari Smith's slump the last three games cost them wins in Dallas and Portland. That's fair. Both of those games, he had matching stat lines of 2 of 13 overall, 1 of 7 from 3.
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Chapter 5: What are the implications of the Rockets' recent losses?
And knock on wood, Shingu should be back within the next few games. So hopefully, you know, getting everyone healthy and back in their normal roles will help. Some of this is just natural, you know, ebbs and flows of an NBA season. Get Steven back to his sixth, seventh man role, and you can pair him with Reid and
You know, maybe that helps Reed get back in the rhythm that he was at prior to the holidays. But in terms of what's happened the last few weeks, look, Jabari has cost them the last couple of games, the subpar shooting, and he's frustrated. And I get why in year four, it's easy to say, you know, it's easy sort of to make Jabari Smith Jr. this year what Jalen Green was last year.
But that's not what the Rockets are asking from Jabari as a player. It's simply not. It's Reed Shepard, especially when, and this is not Reed's fault, but his archetype as a player became even more important to this year's team when Fred and Fleet went out.
And so the fact that that archetype suddenly isn't working as well anymore, you already lost Fred, gone on for almost 10 games, that is much more worrisome. I don't think it means anything in the grand scheme, but in terms of why this team has lost games at a little bit of a greater rate lately...
I would say it has a lot more to do with Reed Shepard than Jabari Smith Jr., even though it feels like, at least on my timeline, the majority of the outrage, so to speak, is being directed at Jabari. Paolo, what do you think as far as those individual storylines? And, you know, if you had to blame someone for why the Rockets have shown this downturn in form, who would you pick?
Yeah, this is going to be a bit boring because I agree with you. I'm just going to add a couple of points on top of what you already said. I don't think Jabari is part of the problem at all. He's had a couple of bad games. He's also had some really good games. He's one of our best clutch time shot makers as far as, you know,
not being afraid of the moment when the ball gets kicked out to him in the clutch. He's someone who is unique in our team as far as being able to get those in-between shots reliably. You know, KV is obviously the best at it, maybe of all time. But Jabari does it in a different way because KV is always getting, you know, grabbing all of that attention.
And he's probably on our team, the guy that gets the most attention from the defense.
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Chapter 6: How do injuries impact the Rockets' performance and expectations?
And Jabari, it's really unexpected to defensive teams because typically when you're seeing a role player like that, you're saying, oh, OK, you know, I just don't want him to shoot a three or get a layup.
And for Jabari, getting that in-between shot a lot of the time is what connects positions offensively when we're struggling to get baskets or when we don't want to go through all of the energy and effort that it takes to generate an open three or force a drive to the rim.
Jabari brings something to our offense that keeps it in rhythm in a way that most guys that play his position and have this skill set don't. So I don't think it's a Tlevari problem at all. I've talked about it before. I've been pretty impressed with Tlevari as a player. I think he has evolved in basically every aspect of his game this season.
And I don't think that three bad games... Well, it's not even really... Is it three bad games? It's true. Yeah, it's not even three bad games. Like, he was good against the Suns. So I don't see it. It seems like perhaps people are frustrated and looking for someone to blame. Obviously, they don't blame the year two guy. Yeah. And you can't blame a man anymore.
And then Shang-Gon is not there playing. So if, you know, people want to blame someone, fine. Yeah. I do think that when we talk about Reed, that is something worth talking about because he hasn't been great for a few games now. And I guess it was never, you know, he's someone whose impact comes a lot from the fact that he can shoot the ball from anywhere, right?
And in the last, you know, few games, probably 10 games, he hasn't been able to do it at the clip that he was doing it earlier in the season. And that's to be expected. He was shooting nearly 50% from three. You know, it was never expected for him to keep that up. And if he went from that to just, you know, what his true average is, let's say his true average is 43%, which is really, really good.
If his true average were 43% for the season and he started the way he started, he would have had an insane shooting season anyway. So you got to average it out. You know, he was going to have a slot. So that his true average would be what his average is, right? And so it's expected for a guy, especially a young player, to have a slump like that.
But even if it isn't the young player, that's just how the math works, right? So it was never sustainable to have Reid shoot that high of a percentage from three. So the fact that it's happening now, it's sort of to be expected. It's not a big indictment on Reid.
But it still does feel when you watch the games, it still does feel like when Reed comes into the game, you get that, you know, offensive wildcard feeling where, okay, we've seen him take over games and we've seen, and we see him come into the game and we typically think, oh, okay, okay, here comes Reed.
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Chapter 7: What are the potential trade options for the Rockets as the deadline approaches?
Let's see what Reed's got. We're excited to see what Reed's going to give us tonight. You know, it's a different feeling than what it is to Jabari where we're kind of, You know, the ceiling isn't as high, the floor isn't as low, you kind of know what you're going to get. And the off chance that he does have a great game, you know, he's not going to be too applauded for it.
In the rare times that he has a bad game, it stands out, right? But it shouldn't because we also don't do it when he has a great game. We also don't give him credits or too much credits. We don't go out of our way to give him credit when he has a really good game. So it really feels like, okay, we kind of know what Jabari is.
He might become a little bit better throughout his career, but it's the same feeling we had when we drafted him and played during the reveal. It's like, oh, okay, this guy is an unknown. He's exciting. Let's see what he's going to give us tonight.
And for that reason, people are, I guess, quicker to jump on, let's start to read over Jabari, not necessarily because of how well they've been playing, because if that's the case, I don't think that that's a discussion. it's more so that it's more exciting to watch, perhaps.
And so in a situation where Jabari is playing below his standard, people are going to jump at the chance to have Reed start, just like they jumped at the chance to have Reed start when a man wasn't playing to his standard, right? When Reed's always going to be the first guy that people think, oh, okay, let's start Reed and see if it fixes it.
Because they already want to watch replay more anyway, and that's the next step. I don't think it necessarily comes from a genuine place of, oh, I think this is going to lead to better basketball for the team at this moment in time. It might have been true not with Jabari, but it might have been true a couple of weeks back when people wanted to start him for a kogi and stuff like that.
At that point, there was an argument to be made. At this point, I don't think there's an argument to be made. Because even offensively, Reid's playing worse than Jabari. And so why would you give up what you give up defensively? It just doesn't make sense at all. It doesn't seem like a smart discussion.
As far as your question of what's the reason the Rockets are losing games, I mean, teams lose games. I don't think there's a single reason. You know, KD's playing out of his mind. The man is playing really well.
On social media, there's always someone to blame, Paolo. Come on.
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Chapter 8: How does the absence of key players affect the Rockets' playoff prospects?
My point is that you have the ability, both financially and with assets, to bring in a high floor player that could be an upgrade to Reed Shepard, especially if you don't feel like Fred and Fleet's going to come back. And I've been told that the Rockets are hopeful that by February, ideally by the trade deadline, but certainly by the all-star break, they think they'll have more clarity.
They won't know for sure, but by the time you get to February, you're within a couple of months of the playoffs. And so I think by that point, they'll have a better idea as to whether it's realistic. You know, all indications to this point, like Reed's doing or Fred's doing, excuse me, more and more on court work. And so everybody's saying the right things that they're still hopeful of a return.
But is that possible? The playoffs would start seven months since the injury, since his ACL surgery. the Rockets will have a better idea come February by the time you get inside that two-month window.
And so if it doesn't look good on Fred, and if Reed is still at the level we've seen the last 10 games, then that's the one spot where you might not have to invest that much, but you could get a lot of bang for your buck, at least in terms of, you know, the playoff formula. Like, I don't think... You're certainly not going to stop playing Reid in the regular season. He needs to get better.
He needs to continue developing. But it could potentially provide an insurance policy for the playoffs that, you know, a month or so ago, we didn't think would be necessary at all. Like my response at the time was, who are you going to take away minutes from? If you bring in someone, how are they going to play?
Well, I think now there's a pretty clear path where someone could play and upgrade this rotation relative to what we've seen from Reed the last 9 or 10 games. And I don't know if you want to do it in the regular season, but especially if you're pessimistic on Fred's ability to return by the playoffs...
then I could see it making a little more sense to pursue a veteran guard, if not by trade, certainly by the buyout market. Not saying a huge acquisition, nothing super transformative, but I guess Reid's struggles the last 10 days or so have me a little more open-minded to exploring that guard market. Yeah.
Paolo, where are you at in terms of, I guess, how REIT struggles impact the trade deadline? Have you moved off your position at all relative to a few weeks ago? Not to say that my position has entirely changed, but my mind is opening a little bit. That's where I'm at. Paolo, where are you at on the trade front?
You've been consumed by the national media goons who want us to trade for a point card just because we don't have one on paper. That's my accusation.
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