The 2022-23 Houston Rockets (22-60) finished with the worst record in the Western Conference, marking their third consecutive season of doing so. The year marked the culmination of what general manager Rafael Stone has referred to as “Phase 1” of a franchise rebuild.
While many of the negative results were a product of having a young, developing roster in tandem with an unproven head coach, Stephen Silas, the Rockets didn’t have much help in other areas, either.
Per veteran NBA scribe Tom Haberstroh, who now operates The Finder With Tom Haberstroh newsletter, the Rockets were assigned the lowest quality referees of any team last season. He writes:
The Rockets saw 17 games with a bottom 10 percentile average RefScore; the Lakers and Mavericks each saw two. The NBA assigned as many rookie refs in a midseason 20-game stretch for Houston as they did for the Lakers’ 82-game stretch (seven) — that is, the entire Lakers season. Yeah, it was bad in Houston.
More details on Haberstroh’s RefScore methodology are available here. The metric is designed to quantify the referee quality for each game based on the NBA’s season-long distribution of assignments.
Condolences to the Houston Rockets for getting assigned the lowest quality referees of any team last season. I’m sorry, @DreamShakeSBN. 🔦 https://t.co/YvBtECoR2w pic.twitter.com/NoTSCBypIF
— Tom Haberstroh (@tomhaberstroh) September 1, 2023
In large part, the poor officiating draw reflects Houston’s status as an organization. The NBA typically sends its better officials to games that are more likely to be relevant in playoff races and/or be featured to a broad audience on national television. Since trading James Harden in January 2021, the Rockets haven’t met those criteria.
With Ime Udoka hired as head coach and veteran players such as Fred VanVleet and Dillon Brooks added in the 2023 offseason, perhaps the trend starts to reverse in 2023-24. One can at least hope.
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