Weaknesses of Magic Ball Theory

After a brief warm-up, the arena quickly moved into the pregame introductions.

The Rockets' starters were introduced first.

Paul, Harden, and Cousins—the Big Three—all started, with PJ Tucker and Luc Richard Batum filling out the remaining two spots.

At the beginning of the season, the Rockets had paired Capela and Cousins as the Twin Towers, but the results had not been good.

Especially since D'Antoni was a Head Coach who advocated offense, he could not stand the slow-paced attack.

After only a couple of games, he put Capela on the bench and began experimenting with different lineups.

Brewer plus David West, Brewer plus Tucker, Tucker plus West, Brewer plus Batum...

After all those experiments, he finally found the lineup he wanted.

Tucker had already been an excellent ready-to-play 3D Player during his time with the Suns, and after coming to the Rockets, his increased exposure further magnified his strengths.

Although he was somewhat undersized, he was especially strong physically. Particularly in the small-ball era, ordinary Power Forwards could not back him down in the post.

His corner three-pointer had also been seriously underrated. From the corner, he gave Cousins plenty of room to operate inside.

Before coming to the Rockets, Batum had been purely a defensive grunt. When he was on the court, his team was basically playing four against five.

The Rockets had initially used him that way as well, but while D'Antoni was experimenting with lineups, he aggressively encouraged his wings to take Three-point shots.

It was during that process that Batum displayed an Outside Shooting Stability completely unlike anything he had shown in his previous career.

Everyone, even Batum himself, discovered that he could actually score.

In the end, he successfully edged out Brewer for a spot in the Starting lineup, and he and Tucker supported most