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Can I possibly eat any more crow?
The Houston Rockets are absolutely the best team in the NBA…right now.
Clearly, they have the league’s longest winning streak, but more importantly than that, they sit atop the Western Conference standings, in what is probably the deepest conference in the history of the NBA.
But despite the Rockets 22-game winning streak, the fact that they are executing on both sides of the ball, and the clear perception that their sum is playing greater than their parts, I still can’t see the Rockets doing any real damage in the playoffs.
So, now I know that you’re asking, “Well then why did you say they are the best team ‘right now’…?”
Well, that’s because “right now”, in the mist of the regular season, they are the best team. But the playoffs aren’t right now, they’re later. And when later gets here, they will fall down the rankings.
Now as long as the Rockets keep winning and can hold on to their spot as the first place team in the Western Conference, then in all likelihood, they will win their first-round playoff matchup, and Tracy McGrady can get that monkey off of his back. If the playoffs were to start today (sorry, to those of you who hate that hypothetical), then the Rockets would face the Golden State Warriors. That is no rollover opponent, but the Rockets would be favored to win and should win against the defenseless Warriors. So if they do win, the monkey is off, but it is what would be expected. If they somehow lose, well, they suffer the same humiliation that the Dallas Mavericks suffered last post season.
But after the first round, I can’t see the Rockets winning another series. Of course they “can”, but without Yao Ming I don’t see them beating one of this year’s 4th or 5th seeds in a 7-game series. When you play a team seven times, all of that your sum is better than your parts thing tends to fall apart, because the individuals start to play up to the other team, and eventually both teams are going to be playing their best basketball. Granted, the Lakers lost to the Pistons in 2004, but when you really look back at that series, Karl Malone was hurt, Gary Payton was no longer “The Glove,” and Ben Wallace proved to be just enough of a gnat to defect Shaquille O’Neal giving the Pistons line up of Rasheed Wallace, Chauncey Billups and Richard Hamilton the better foursome.
So if I am one of these teams in the West, and Houston starts to sew up that #1 seed, I have to wonder if being the 4th seed isn’t so bad. Certainly, I’m promoting tanking games to get a specific spot, but it has happened before. And while that would result in a more difficult first-round opponent, your second round opponent would likely be the Rockets (or even better, the Warriors), and you could face them without Yao. If I’m San Antonio and the Spurs, I’d certainly love my chances against a Yao-less Rockets team in a playoff series for 7 games more than I would like my chances against the Lakers or Suns in the second the round.
But that’s just another big hypothetical.
What is reality, is that the Houston Rockets are serving more than their fair share of crow. And after calling them dead after Yao went down, I’m certainly having more than a few helpings myself. What I have just stated in this article will probably come back to haunt me, and given my accuracy thus far, I’ll be eating even more crow.
So I’ll just end this piece by saying that the Rockets are playing great basketball and can’t be counted out.
But are they a Western Conference contender?
But despite the Rockets 22-game winning streak, the fact that they are executing on both sides of the ball, and the clear perception that their sum is playing greater than their parts, I still can’t see the Rockets doing any real damage in the playoffs.
So, now I know that you’re asking, “Well then why did you say they are the best team ‘right now’…?”
Well, that’s because “right now”, in the mist of the regular season, they are the best team. But the playoffs aren’t right now, they’re later. And when later gets here, they will fall down the rankings.
Now as long as the Rockets keep winning and can hold on to their spot as the first place team in the Western Conference, then in all likelihood, they will win their first-round playoff matchup, and Tracy McGrady can get that monkey off of his back. If the playoffs were to start today (sorry, to those of you who hate that hypothetical), then the Rockets would face the Golden State Warriors. That is no rollover opponent, but the Rockets would be favored to win and should win against the defenseless Warriors. So if they do win, the monkey is off, but it is what would be expected. If they somehow lose, well, they suffer the same humiliation that the Dallas Mavericks suffered last post season.
But after the first round, I can’t see the Rockets winning another series. Of course they “can”, but without Yao Ming I don’t see them beating one of this year’s 4th or 5th seeds in a 7-game series. When you play a team seven times, all of that your sum is better than your parts thing tends to fall apart, because the individuals start to play up to the other team, and eventually both teams are going to be playing their best basketball. Granted, the Lakers lost to the Pistons in 2004, but when you really look back at that series, Karl Malone was hurt, Gary Payton was no longer “The Glove,” and Ben Wallace proved to be just enough of a gnat to defect Shaquille O’Neal giving the Pistons line up of Rasheed Wallace, Chauncey Billups and Richard Hamilton the better foursome.
So if I am one of these teams in the West, and Houston starts to sew up that #1 seed, I have to wonder if being the 4th seed isn’t so bad. Certainly, I’m promoting tanking games to get a specific spot, but it has happened before. And while that would result in a more difficult first-round opponent, your second round opponent would likely be the Rockets (or even better, the Warriors), and you could face them without Yao. If I’m San Antonio and the Spurs, I’d certainly love my chances against a Yao-less Rockets team in a playoff series for 7 games more than I would like my chances against the Lakers or Suns in the second the round.
But that’s just another big hypothetical.
What is reality, is that the Houston Rockets are serving more than their fair share of crow. And after calling them dead after Yao went down, I’m certainly having more than a few helpings myself. What I have just stated in this article will probably come back to haunt me, and given my accuracy thus far, I’ll be eating even more crow.
So I’ll just end this piece by saying that the Rockets are playing great basketball and can’t be counted out.
But are they a Western Conference contender?
Well, they’ll have to win 4 games, in any order, this April and May, to get that characterization from me.
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