Tag: Mike D’Antoni

Ben McLemore’s shooting, minutes trending up for Rockets

Ben McLemore is shooting 45.5% on three-pointers over his past eight games, during which the Rockets have gone 6-2 and could easily be 8-0.

No matter the result, Ben McLemore has kept shooting. That strategy is currently paying off for the Houston Rockets.

Now 26 years old, the former 2013 NBA Draft lottery selection out of Kansas is reviving his NBA career. After scoring 18 points on 6-of-7 shooting (85.7%) in Friday’s win at Orlando, McLemore now leads the entire league among qualified players with a 121.3 offensive rating.

Playing alongside stars such as James Harden and Russell Westbrook certainly helps on many metrics, and the attention drawn by those two has clearly gotten the 6-foot-3 guard many open looks.

But McLemore also doing a much better job at the moment of converting those opportunities. Over Houston’s first 17 games this season, McLemore shot just 29.6% on three-pointers and averaged just 7.3 points. By contrast, over the eight games since, he’s at 45.5% from three-point range and 16.6 points per game overall.

“This is a team where they let me shoot my shots and play free, and let me play my game,” McLemore said after Friday’s victory in Orlando.

McLemore has shot 47.2% from three-point range over his last four games off the Houston bench, quieting concerns about early-season splits that showed him shooting worse as a reserve. The Rockets prefer to start Danuel House Jr. at small forward for defensive reasons, since he’s longer at 6-foot-6 and more versatile.

Entering the 2019-20 season, McLemore was largely seen as a bust ⁠— at least relative to his draft position ⁠— after his first six NBA seasons with the Sacramento Kings and Memphis Grizzlies. But this is the first time in his career that he’s been with a contender, and he’s currently fitting in quite well as a role player around Harden and Westbrook.

The Rockets are 6-2 over McLemore’s torrid eight-game stretch, and they could easily be 8-0 if not for the protested double-overtime loss in San Antonio (with Harden’s made fourth-quarter dunk not counting) and a Dec. 9 loss to the Kings on Nemanja Bjelica’s last-second buzzer-beater from nearly 35 feet away from the basket.

In that Kings loss, McLemore even showed a flair for the dramatic with a go-ahead three-pointer in the final 20 seconds.

 

Even with those two near-misses, that .750 winning percentage by the Rockets over McLemore’s current hot stretch would be on pace for nearly 62 wins over a full 82-game season.

Besides the benefits of playing for a contender, McLemore has also proven to be an ideal fit for the three-point-heavy style of head coach Mike D’Antoni and GM Daryl Morey in Houston.

For the season overall, 7.0 of McLemore’s 8.1 average field-goal attempts per game are from three-point range. That 86.4% clip is historically high, and he still hasn’t taken a single mid-range shot all year.

That type of shot chart, combined with his recent uptick in efficiency, is a big part of why McLemore’s minutes per game have steadily risen from 7.3 in October to 24.5 in November and now 29.8 in December.

McLemore and the Rockets (17-8) will look to keep their current run going when the Detroit Pistons (10-15) visit Houston on Saturday night.

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