Few Houston Rockets notes from the past week: - There’s a sense of belief around the team that they can do something special this season. They look at OKC and San Antonio like they can cause them problems too. You can just feel it. - Internally, Rockets recognize how deep they are. Given most of their team are veterans, they see this as healthy competition and injury insurance. - Ime wants more variety in the offense, but the team will still hang its hat on its defensive identity. - Ime’s focus on improving the three-point shooting is not necessarily the volume, but the quality of looks. - Marcus Smart will play some point guard for this team. His ball handling is a big plus. He and Ime are excited to work with each other again. - Amen Thompson has put in the hours this offseason working on his game, particularly his jump shot, but it’s evident that transferring that across to a competitive setting is a whole different challenge - Everyone is excited about the return of Fred VanVleet. You can sense the calmness, steadiness and veteran presence he brings. The offense should be more organized and the starting 5 spent a considerable amount of time going through offensive concepts together to build that familiarity. - Amen Thompson is spending a lot of time with Marcus Smart, and picking his brain defensively. - Alperen Sengun feels like he’s in “prove it” mode. He was quite subdued but it came across as focus rather than avoidance. - Bogdan Bogdanović is an incredible luxury to have off the bench for this team. There will be nights where he’s their 1st or 2nd highest scorer. - One of either Tari Eason or Reed Shepard will struggle to find consistent, sustainable minutes, purely off the depth of this team if they’re fully healthy. - Everyone is excited about the return of Steven Adams, they’ve missed his physicality and offensive rebounding. - Jabari Smith Jr remains the swing piece offensively for this team. During live practices they’re attempting to generate easy baskets for him by asking him to get out in transition, make his threes or post early on mismatches. It doesn’t feel all that much will be intentionally ran for him other than some mismatch hunting in the low post, but him being effective will blow open or limit the ceiling for this team. - The front office continues to work through ways in putting a roster together that has enough shooting around Kevin Durant that will help with spacing for his isolation scoring. - Durant would love to play for Team USA in 2028 if all goes to plan. - Durant says not load managing last season allowed him to play 78 games. He will continue with this approach. - Durant was disappointed with how his season ended last year but it was out of his control because the injuries were all contact ones and not soft tissue