Clint Capela’s improvement is the key to the Rockets’ long-term future

For as often as the Houston Rockets are breaking three-point records, Clint Capela stands out in an unusual way: He’s the only player on the team who hasn’t made a triple in his NBA career. (Zhou Qi doesn’t count, since he’ll make one soon.)

That’s not to say every player on Houston’s roster is a shooter, but nearly all of them do. Capela, instead, is a throwback to the old-school centers who used to run the league. He’ll block shots, set screens, crash the lane, and dive for alley-oops. It’s almost refreshing to see a player accept those parameters.

It’s especially refreshing in Houston, where a good team was hamstrung by Dwight Howard’s insistence on being a player who he isn’t — namely, an old school post threat, something he has long aspired to be and can’t live up to anymore. When the Rockets let Howard loose, they pinned their hope on his replacement, Capela. Those were high hopes for a player who had only appeared in 89 games for his career.

But Capela is validating the Rockets now, no more so than Thursday’s game against the Cavaliers. Cleveland had lost six of its last nine games coming in, but was pushing to beat Houston on the road. With 1:39 left in the game, the Cavs only trailed by a point.

Once, James Harden missed a game-clinching shot ... and there was an offensive rebound. Twice, Harden missed another potential game-clincher — and Capela was there. He laid it in. It was a four-point game with less than 11 seconds left.

LeBron James went for the quick two on the other end. Once again, Capela:

He finished with 19 points, 13 rebounds, and four blocks on 7-of-9 shooting.

Something that stood out to me last season when I visited the Rockets for a week was a Mike D’Antoni quote:

“Capela is the player I get mad at the most,” he said.

D’Antoni quickly clarified that he didn’t mean that negatively. No, it’s that Houston sees so much potential in the 6’10 center, still only 23 years old. The Rockets are a team that’s built to win now, but Capela is a building block that could last well beyond this iteration of the roster. They ask a lot out of him, and it’s his internal development that could spur him to even greater heights.

Capela is barely averaging more minutes than he did last season — 24.8 per game — which undersells just how good his per game stats are. He’s averaging 13.3 points, 10.8 rebounds, 1.8 blocks, and 69.4 percent shooting from the field, all career highs. Consider his per-36 minute stats, though: 19.3 points, 15.8 rebounds, and 2.7 blocks. Those stats, if they were reality, would likely earn him an All-Star berth.

But those numbers don’t mean nearly as much for Capela as the minutes do. Last year, D’Antoni would substitute Capela when he started looking tired, and this year seems to be the same.

As D’Antoni told reporters at the end of last season: “If I’m Clint Capela, yeah, I played 24 minutes last year, I need to get that up to 30. What I give can’t fall off, I need to keep not getting tired. I think it’s a matter of getting older, stronger, getting to a man’s body, so I’m looking forward to him progressing whether it’s up to 26 this year or up to 30. He determines that.”

There will always be 15 minutes for Nene off the bench when he plays, which is what the veteran is averaging so far this year, but that doesn’t exclude more minutes for Capela. He has to prove he can play more without losing effectiveness.

Still, that shouldn’t undersell what Capela actually brings to the team. In the short spurts that he plays, no one on the Rockets may be more impactful.

“To me, it’s just a matter of time,” D’Antoni told ESPN. “I’ll be very surprised if he doesn’t become, if not the best center in the league, one of the best. I’ll be shocked.”

ESPN’s Tim MacMahon profiled Capela on Thursday, about how he grew up in Switzerland and how his mother tearfully sent him to a home for underprivileged boys when he was young. Eventually, through his brother, he found basketball. As MacMahon writes:

When Capela first picked up a basketball, he was a long, lanky 13-year-old soccer player who knew next to nothing about the game. After he left the group home, his brother urged Capela to join him playing basketball at a local park.

Capela has improved a free-throw stroke that was embarrassing when he first entered the league. (He missed the first 15 free throw attempts of his career!) He has bettered his body, packing 240 pounds into his frame. Last spring when I visited, Capela had a conversation with a teammate about how he wanted to eventually shoot threes. He’s not rushing that process, though. There’s still much for him to learn that comes natural to his position, after all.

Capela will keep learning, and his growth is enormous for Houston. With a front office led by Daryl Morey, there are always ways to improve a roster, but Capela represents the foremost internal way that the team could get better. They will have to re-sign him this summer, but with restricted free agency rights and the sky-high view of him that they already have, that should be considered a lock.

The Rockets are expecting Chris Paul back in the next week or so, and Capela knows what that means.

More lobs, more minutes, more improvement. That’s what the Rockets expect from Capela, and it’s what Capela believes he can deliver them. He hasn’t shown a reason to doubt him yet.