Before we acquired Harden, and towards the end of the Yao/TMac era, the Rockets were notoriously underdogs. We didn't have the talent of superstar-loaded squads, but no one would out compete us. No one played harder than the Houston Rockets, no team was as unselfish as us. We were a team of misfits, we embraced it, and we thrived way more than we should have. From Hayes, to Scola, Lowry, Landry, Battier the list goes on...I need not boast about the heart and pure passion of our former players. My question, however, is this: has our team exuded less heart and passion since we acquired Harden and Dwight? Perhaps its a by-product of being able to rely on such stars, but our heart and passion just don't seem to eclipse that what it was before we got them. Maybe I'm just wrong. Thoughts? Do we, in general, play with less heart now versus when our team was a successful band of misfits?
i dont know man. they seemed to play hella hard last night. and proceeded to miss shot after shot after shot
Those teams didn't have more heart. You just expected them to suck, and they were better than expected. You expect this team to be better than it is, so they have less "heart".
You are talking about the perennial 9th "seed" in the west team? What "heart" did we possess then? We got beat by the teams that were better than us. I am so tired of hearing we lost b/c we didn't show up crap. We are feasting on weak teams and losing to good teams. Doesn't that tell you we are what we are, a MVP candidate with bunch of average to good players, and in need of third and arguably second star. To your question, no. You can't be serious saying we lost to the Warriors 4 times, the Blazers (w/o Howard), and what have you, because we didn't show up playing in those games. That kind of assessment is getting us nowhere.
Disagree. You can tell when teams give up. Teams that keep fighting have heart. Not saying the Rockets don't have heart now...I'm saying we had more heart and fight when we didn't have stars. That perennial 9th seed was expected to be the 14th seed. And we remained in the playoff picture until the very end. Also, my analysis isn't as short-cited as last game and a 4 game series from this year. On the contrary, we showed good heart in even coming back last night. My point was that, perhaps a team full of misfits exudes more fight and will. Perhaps expectations do skew how we measure heart, if we can even assess it.
I don't understand why we showed "heart" in the comeback last night? The blazers were up big, and we had a good momentum at home for awhile. That's basketball. You have ebbs and waves in scoring. What is "heart"? Did our guys not dive for the lose ball when they were down? We got behind b/c they executed better than us. A few missed threes here and there, a few turnovers, all of sudden we were down by double digits. This is the pattern in all games we got beat. We feast on opponent's turn overs and fast breaks. Simply put, they made more baskets than us in a stretch. That's not attributed to we have less heart. This is just what we are, reflecting the style of basketball we are playing and the personnel we have.
Let's see. Highest paid player and superstar center injured for most of the year. Departure of 3 rotation players to start the year, replacing only 1 with FA signing. Preseason ranking of somewhere between 8~13th range. Talks of how Rockets players hate each other. . . . Fourth Best Record in the NBA. If this team had no heart and is winning on pure talent, then we must be the most talented team to ever be put on Earth.
Right those hearts got us a whole bunch of 9th seed finishes let's trade our "no heart" stars and players and continue to draft another 10 Marcus Morris and patrick patterson's with Kevin Martin as our franchise player. Those 3 years were so bad, no future, no draft picks, no playoffs hearts and passion are just mediocre skilled players overachieving their perceived potential, but in the end they still aren't very good.
Worst thread ever. Less heart or not they got the best record we've had in years. Whatever it is keep it up cuz obviously a whole lot of heart from previous players got us no where
well guess heart does not equal wins, cuz we're the 3rd seed now but couldn't make the playoffs with this heart you speak of
Can we please stop with the "band of misfits 09 - 12 era" rockets. Yeah they played with heart but what the hell, you want to go back to being a 9th or 10th seed with Kevin Martin or Luis Scola being our best player? I'm sorry but those were some dark times, winning 42 or 43 games just to be the best lottery team and not make the play offs. I like watching games feeling like there is a 60 - 70% chance we win tonight because of the talent that's on the team.
Considering we win a lot of close games this season, I would say that we (at least harden) has a lot of heart.
