Scouting one-pager: Houston Rockets (HOU)
2025-26 regular season · 82 games · 7,362 FGA. Auto-generated by scouting/build_onepager.py from public data; every number traceable to a gated pipeline in this repo. Shot pricing uses the 2023-24 shot-quality model, whose season-out transfer was validated in the backtest; shot-making is empirical-Bayes shrunk before it is allowed to drive a conclusion.
Terms
- PPS: Points per shot: total points on field-goal attempts divided by attempts. Free throws excluded.
- xPPS: Expected points per shot - the model's fair price of a shot diet: what an average shooter would score on the same attempts, judged from location and shot type alone, before knowing what went in.
- shot-making: Actual minus expected points per 100 shots: conversion above or below what the shot diet itself explains. Positive means making shots the model prices as hard.
- EB making: A player's shot-making after empirical-Bayes shrinkage: the observed number pulled toward the league mean in proportion to its sampling noise. The number to trust for projection.
- FGA: Field-goal attempts.
- RAPM: Regularized adjusted plus-minus: a ridge regression crediting each player with net points per 100 possessions while adjusting for the other nine players on the floor.
- net_100: Net points per 100 possessions: 100 x plus-minus / possessions; sits on the same scale as the NBA's published net rating.
- rush: Shots in the final four seconds of a period - the desperation window where both shot selection and execution collapse.
- empirical Bayes: Estimate the spread of true skill across the league from the data, then pull each individual's noisy estimate toward the league mean in proportion to its noise.
- shrinkage weight: The fraction of an observed number that survives empirical-Bayes regression: 1 means fully trusted, 0 means replaced by the league mean.
- CI: Confidence interval.
- corner three: A three-pointer from the corner, where the NBA line is roughly 3 ft closer than the arc - the geometry discount that makes it the cheapest three.
Keys
- They hunt corner threes: 30.2% of their threes come from the corners (league 25.9%). Run shooters off the corner line first.
- Mid-range reliant: 13.5% from mid-range vs league 10.0%; live with contested twos over open threes.
- Kevin Durant is a genuine shot-maker: +14.8 pts/100 above expectation after empirical-Bayes shrinkage; contest even the bad shots.
- Best shot diet: Amen Thompson (1.17 xPPS on 1044 FGA). The value is where the shots come from; deny the spot, not the release.
- Their most-used five that wins its minutes: K. Durant - J. Okogie - A. Sengun - J. Smith Jr. - A. Thompson (+9.3/100 over 767 possessions).
Shot profile vs league
| HOU | League | Δ |
|---|
| PPS (points per shot) | 1.085 | 1.091 | -0.007 |
| xPPS, the shot-diet price* | 1.084 | 1.097 | -0.013 |
| Shot-making, pts/100 vs model | +0.1 | -0.5 | +0.6 |
| Rim share | 27.3% | 28.4% | -1.1 pp |
| Mid-range share | 13.5% | 10.0% | +3.5 pp |
| Three share | 35.0% | 41.5% | -6.5 pp |
| Corner share of threes | 30.2% | 25.9% | +4.3 pp |
| Final-4s (rush) shot share | 2.0% | 1.8% | +0.2 pp |
* xPPS prices where they shoot from, independent of whether shots fell: the stable, scoutable part of the profile (year-over-year r ≈ .9).
Personnel (top 8 by volume)
| Player | FGA | PPS | xPPS (diet) | Making/100 | EB making | RAPM/100 |
|---|
| Kevin Durant | 1,376 | 1.176 | 0.996 | +17.9 | +14.8 | +1.8 |
| Alperen Sengun | 1,123 | 1.074 | 1.061 | +1.2 | +0.9 | +0.0 |
| Amen Thompson | 1,044 | 1.091 | 1.172 | -8.1 | -7.0 | +2.3 |
| Jabari Smith Jr. | 975 | 1.080 | 1.097 | -1.7 | -1.4 | +0.5 |
| Reed Sheppard | 946 | 1.100 | 1.028 | +7.2 | +5.1 | +1.7 |
| Tari Eason | 580 | 0.991 | 1.112 | -12.1 | -8.2 | +0.7 |
| Josh Okogie | 294 | 1.061 | 1.171 | -10.9 | -5.4 | -0.5 |
| Aaron Holiday | 252 | 1.099 | 1.059 | +4.1 | +1.3 | +1.9 |
EB making = shot-making regressed to league mean by reliability: the number to trust. RAPM from the opponent-adjusted 2025-26 lineup model (±≈3/100 CI at a season of minutes; treat as descriptive).
Most-used lineups
| Lineup | Min | Poss | Net/100 |
|---|
| K. Durant - J. Okogie - A. Sengun - J. Smith Jr. - A. Thompson | 377 | 767 | +9.3 |
| K. Durant - A. Sengun - J. Smith Jr. - T. Eason - A. Thompson | 306 | 628 | +8.8 |
| K. Durant - A. Sengun - J. Smith Jr. - A. Thompson - R. Sheppard | 273 | 604 | +0.8 |