{"id":461373,"date":"2026-10-09T17:26:19","date_gmt":"2026-10-09T17:26:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/461373\/"},"modified":"2026-10-09T17:26:19","modified_gmt":"2026-10-09T17:26:19","slug":"houston-rockets-vs-dallas-mavericks-fred-vanvleets-instant-impact","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/461373\/","title":{"rendered":"Houston Rockets vs. Dallas Mavericks: Fred VanVleet’s instant impact"},"content":{"rendered":"

To be honest, as someone who didn\u2019t watch every Houston Rockets game before starting this job, I was skeptical that so much of the team\u2019s offensive issues could be solved by Fred VanVleet\u2019s return<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It felt like the Rockets were placing a lot of faith in a 32-year-old one-time All-Star coming off a serious ACL injury.<\/p>\n

Friday morning\u2019s preseason opener in Macau \u2014 VanVleet\u2019s first NBA action in more than 500 days \u2014 was an early data point to see how the healthy, revamped Rockets would look.<\/p>\n

Preseason is just preseason, and the Dallas Mavericks didn\u2019t play everyone (and might not be that good when they do), so my skepticism remains, especially when comparing the Rockets to the top of the Western Conference. But it dropped considerably after the 135-117 Houston win.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t just VanVleet\u2019s individual performance across 24 minutes \u2014 17 points and 7 assists on 5-for-12 shooting, all triples \u2014 but also how much smoother Houston\u2019s operation looked all around. The Rockets shot 54.7% from the field and 50% from 3-point range, but the number that stands out the most: 36 assists on 47 made shots.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s better than all but two Houston performances from last season \u2014 and consider that Friday\u2019s figure includes bench minutes<\/p>\n

Houston got into its actions faster and possessions flowed smoothly, with passing lanes and open shots available to all. A simple play that illustrates VanVleet\u2019s value: The Rockets cleared out one side of the floor to set up a post-up opportunity for Kevin Durant.<\/a> Last season, getting that pass to the superstar forward was often an ordeal, with him or Alperen \u015eeng\u00fcn in similar situations getting pushed out to the perimeter before receiving the ball.<\/p>\n

Against the Mavericks, VanVleet made the play \u2014 and many others \u2014 look easy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"To be honest, as someone who didn\u2019t watch every Houston Rockets game before starting this job, I was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":461374,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[56,58,57],"class_list":["post-461373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=461373"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461373\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/461374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=461373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=461373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=461373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}