Now what?

The Rockets spent three days working to improve their defense and it was better, for a while, only to have the offense look worse than since Mike D'Antoni came to town to order up 3s.

It's not just that the Rockets fell to 1-5, losing as many times in October as they had through Dec. 20 last season, though that would be bad enough. It's that they are not even coming close, trailing by 29, 28 (twice) and 17 in their four home losses.

Two weeks since Rockets owner Tilman Fertitta took the microphone and said the Rockets would be better than last season, they would have to go 64-12 to match that record. Putting that aside, as D'Antoni pointed out, playing in the West means it gets late early. It is way too soon to consider home-court advantage, but when the playoff positioning comes down to the final games in April, the Rockets' nosedive in October will be remembered.

For now, they need to make the long climb back toward playing at a level to even begin to consider all that. They are far away on both ends of the floor.

The one thing the Rockets do seem to have going is a determination to see it through with faith that getting injured players back could kick-start a turnaround and there is enough talent in the locker room.

There will be more to it than that, but unlike the 2015-16 season when the Rockets started 4-7 (and they will have work to do to even match that) there are no signs that they have tuned out their coach. They even sound like D'Antoni after games and before practices, believing he is suffering and searching with them and more important, trusting him.

There will not be much time to make corrections, just one practice before playing three games in four days. But much of the improvement has to be in the Rockets' poise and confidence. No one saw this coming, but coaches often say in the NBA things can go from good to bad and bad to good quickly. Having gone through the first half, the Rockets desperately need to move on to the second.

1. After three days of will he or won't he change the defense, no one asked Mike D'Antoni after Tuesday's loss if he will be changing the offense.

He's not, but it's no better than the defense had been when he was ready to change it up only to decide the Rockets had to play better, not differently.

A game later, the defense is not the Rockets' greatest problem. In the dreadful start to the Rockets' season, that's progress.

When the defense was bad Tuesday, it was so bad that P.J. Tucker called it "an embarrassment." But there were 18, almost 19 good minutes before the defense fell apart to end the first half and start the second, leading to the latest blowout loss. The good stretch to start the game lasted longer than the good stretch Friday. That's something. Not much, but something.

The offense, however, was horrible until the Blazers benched their starters and then improved to mediocre.

The Rockets moved up a couple notches defensively, and now have the 24th-ranked defense. They are 26th offensively, a fall nearly as stunning from last season spent on top as the collapse from 5-1 to start one season to 1-5 (and 0-4 at home) to begin the next.

The good news in that is there is little doubt the Rockets offense will come around. If nothing else, the Rockets are not too far away from adding James Harden.

The Rockets without Harden look like last season's Cavaliers without LeBron James, otherwise known as this season's Cavaliers.

Yet, as much as the Rockets need his scoring and playmaking, and just the direction he gives their offense, they have desperately lacked his attitude.

For better or worse, Harden does bring an unshakeable confidence. Without that, the Rockets have been terribly fragile.

They did struggle when he played. The Rockets were on their way to a 1-3 start when he limped away with a strained hamstring. But that was largely because of the failings defensively and the absence of Chris Paul for two of the losses. By their latest loss, the Rockets had reached the point they seemed to have lost the last bits of last season's offensive swagger, to the point that when they shot, thought bubbles almost popped over their heads with the words "oh please, oh please, oh please."

In the two games without Harden, Paul has made 9 of 32 shots, and that was with a 4 of 5 fourth quarter with the Blazers starters watching on the bench with their feet up. Eric Gordon went 4 of 18 on Tuesday and has made just 19 of 66 shots since moving into the starting lineup with Paul and then Harden out.

Take away the scoring they expected from Harden, Paul and Gordon and there is little wonder the Rockets are unrecognizable.

Carmelo Anthony is not even close to the entire problem. He has not been a solution, either, making 37.3 percent of his shots and averaging 13.2 points per game.

Less clear is whether they should be worried or concerned that they are getting the shots they want. It could be a good sign that they are getting layups, free throws and wide-open 3s. They are getting the right shots from the right players. Michael Carter-Williams might be 2 of 10 on 3s this season, missing many badly but no one expected him to be a 3-point shooter. And that is still just 10 3-pointers in six games.

The shots missed by their most important shooters have been the shots the Rockets have to make. If they can't make those shots, there is not much D'Antoni can do to get them better looks.

He made a good point when he said that the desperation the Rockets brought to their defense to start the game did not work so well on the other end, where they had to be poised and confident.

That could be where Harden offers a solution. Just a game with Harden looking as he has through the previous three seasons could be enough to ease all that pressure and get some of the shots around him to fall. It would not hurt to have Paul play as he always had, something that also seems certain. Others might fill in for them at times, but no one on the Rockets' roster can influence those around them the way Harden and Paul now must.

No one could have seen this start coming, especially with the inept offense. But it is not difficult to see the way out. The Rockets can expect to turn things around because of the players that were expected to ensure they would not have to. Then they can keep working on their defense.

2. When the Rockets flew to Phoenix after the 1994 Choke City game, Rudy Tomjanovich spent the flight trying to come up with what he would say in the next video session. It hit him that rather than showing all that went wrong after blowing the lead in Game 2 of that series, he would show how the Rockets built the lead in the first place.

That worked. He rebuilt the confidence that had been shaken.

Mike D'Antoni can't go that route entirely. The Rockets don't have a season's worth of success as a foundation. And they have far too much to correct to look only at the bright side that their talented video staff can find in there somewhere. But when D'Antoni needed to show the Rockets that their defensive style can still work, in addition to showing the mistakes, he showed the video of times it had been executed properly and effectively.

Even with the latest blowout loss, he has more of that video for the next two sessions before the Rockets face the Nets on Friday in Brooklyn.

The Rockets actually were much better defensively for a while Tuesday. It did not last. But through 19 minutes, they were active and aggressive, contesting shots reliably and forcing turnovers. They were tied at 28, which said something about how horrible the offense had been, but also demonstrated the Rockets can defend better than they had been in the season's first five games.

Sure, the Blazers missed some shots they would eventually make. The Rockets are not going to have many games sewed up by the team that gets to 75 first. But for most of the first half, they did not make the mistakes that gave away layups and that had been so much of a part of their early-season struggles.

That might not be saying much, and it did not last when they seemed demoralized to start the second half. But this season, that amounts to progress.

It will take some doing to build on that, but with the Rockets' preparations over the next five days largely limited to video sessions, D'Antoni will need everything he can find to take the few good signs and turn them into the start of something greater.

3. James Harden will work out Thursday in Brooklyn, stepping up his workload enough for the Rockets to gauge progress in part by how he responds Friday. The Rockets seemed certain of two things, that he will lobby to be cleared to play and that they will be extremely cautious.

With the Rockets heading into a back-to-back, the team might not want him coming back from a hamstring strain by playing both nights. Even if he feels great Friday, they could hold him out against the Nets to play against the Bulls.

Either way, if he comes back in the first days of the trip, it will be a quick turnaround from when he left the floor a week ago. That would be in part because he knew when he felt tightness not to push it. If he fought through, he might have ended up on the shelf for much longer.

The same attitude will have to drive the decision of when he can return. As desperately as the Rockets need him back, and as poor as the 1-5 record is, they know they cannot rush their most indispensable player. Even with Harden, they need to play better in many ways. They might as well focus on playing better without him.

Barring a setback, there was confidence he will return sometime during the five-game trip. The key now is to avoid the setback, and perhaps feel encouraged just to know that eventually, help is on the way.