Zach Lowe loves the ‘scientific experiment’ of 2025-26 Rockets

After losing Fred VanVleet to a potentially season ending knee injury, the Rockets aren’t starting a traditional point guard. The closest thing in Houston’s starting lineup, Amen Thompson, hasn’t even made a single 3-pointer through four games.

And yet, at the moment, the Rockets (2-2) have the NBA’s best offense of the 2025-26 season.

One enormous reason for that success is rebounding. In Wednesday’s victory at Toronto, the Rockets overwhelmed the Raptors on the glass, 64-29.

In a podcast released after that game, The Ringer’s Zach Lowe singled out Houston’s “double big” lineups featuring both Alperen Sengun and Steven Adams.

“Who has the No. 1 offense in the entire NBA? The Houston freaking Rockets, who are proving that you can do it in a lot of different ways,” Lowe explained.

“If you’re big enough and mean enough and you have Amen Thompson and Kevin Durant and Alperen Sengun, and Steven freaking Adams getting every offensive rebound, you can live at the foul line,” Lowe continued. “You can get second, third, and fourth possessions, and you can build an elite offense despite taking almost no 3s and having no traditional point guard, other than Reed Sheppard coming off the bench… who’s been just okay.”

“I feel like I’m watching a scientific experiment every time I watch them. With Sengun and Adams on the floor together, they’re +37 in 70 minutes. This continues to be the greatest accidental discovery in recent basketball history.”

“Steven Adams cannot be kept off the offensive glass. You know what their offensive rebounding rate is with those two guys on the floor? 47 percent. If they shoot and miss, there’s a 50-50 chance they’re getting it back. There was a possession in Toronto where they got two or three offensive rebounds in a row, and on the second one, Scottie Barnes was under the rim trying to box out Adams, I think. And mid-possession, seeing that the Rockets were going to get the ball back, he just slumped his shoulders and kind of stopped playing for a minute, because it’s so demoralizing to play against this big, nasty, physical team.”

To Lowe’s point, it should be noted that head coach Ime Udoka and general manager Rafael Stone clearly didn’t anticipate the two-center lineups functioning as well as they have.

“The double big (success), that did surprise me,” Stone said prior to training camp. “If it didn’t, then it would be shame on me for not doing it at the beginning of the season. But good basketball players can play with good basketball players, and I do think Steven is a very high-IQ player, and Alperen is, too.”

With a limited offensive team in 2024-25, and particularly in halfcourt situations, the Rockets found late in the year that leaning into the high offensive rebounding rate of those Sengun-Adams lineups helped mitigate those deficiencies.

After acquiring Durant in the 2025 offseason, the thought was that Houston’s 2025-26 offense might look a bit more traditional in its approach. But VanVleet’s September injury changed the plan — and so far, the Sengun-Adams pairing is once again working its magic to help overcome those perceived shortcomings.

Lowe’s complete podcast can be viewed here, with the Houston discussion starting approximately 81 minutes in.

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