After playing shorthanded for close to a month, The Rockets are finally getting healthy.
Jalen Green will return to action on Thursday in Indianapolis following a 14-game absence due to a left hamstring strain, and Kevin Porter Jr is expected back next week as he rehabs from a left thigh contusion that has forced him out of 13 games this season. It's always a positive when you have your starting backcourt on the floor, but it will make for some tough decisions moving forward.
Green was averaging 31 minutes per contest before his injury occurred the day before Thanksgiving, while Porter was playing 30 minutes a night until the team elected to shut him down because his thigh injury was keeping him from finishing games. That's 61 minutes between the two, and you don't get to pick them out of thin air. Those minutes will be taken from others.
"That's just part of the league," Rockets head coach Stephen Silas said before Wednesday's 126-106 loss in Milwaukee. "They'll be back, and we'll have to make some adjustments, but they're our guys."
Silas said Green and Porter will be re-inserted into the Rockets starting lineup as soon as they come back, which means two guys are headed to the bench. The team's front court duo of Christian Wood and Jae'Sean Tate won't be touched by the arrival of the Rockets starting backcourt, but the backcourt trio of Eric Gordon, Armoni Brooks, and Garrison Mathews will.
Mathews joined the starting lineup after Green got hurt, but he seems to be the likeliest to remain amongst the starters, due to his size and ability to space to the floor, especially considering how much the Rockets value Gordon's ability to run a second unit.
Gordon averaged 30.4 minutes in the games he played while Green was out, which was only a slight tick up from how much he was playing as a reserve. His minutes are unlikely to take any sort of a hit, though Brooks' will. He played sparingly before Porter and Green went down, eclipsing 10 minutes twice over the Rockets first 16 games of the season, and you'd expect him to return to that role, but what about D.J. Augustin and Josh Christopher?
The 34-year old Augustin played an ancillary role for the Rockets at the start of the season. Most nights he served as the team's fourth guard, and there were some nights when he didn't play at all. The emergence of Christopher over the last month may put him in the DNP-CD column more often.
Drafted with the 24th pick of the draft, Christopher, 20, has made giant strides since the start of the season when his minutes were pretty much limited to garbage time. He has shown himself to be a good defender, at times drawing the assignment of the opposition's best guard, and his offensive game has grown, both on and off the ball. There will be nights when the Rockets need Augustin's steadiness, but there's no reason the fourth guard minutes shouldn't go to Christopher. He's proven he can handle the load, and the more he plays with Green and Porter the better.
Losing your starting backcourt for an extended period, as the Rockets have, is never a good thing, but it allowed the Rockets to bump up the playing time of others.
"The guys who are starting now got the experience of getting playing time and we have a better feel for how they can be successful on the floor," Silas said. "Hopefully that leads to our group playing a more cohesive game and everybody kind of feeling and knowing where they can be successful on the floor."
