I've seen a lot of opinions about whether the Rockets are better than this team or that team today. The Rockets last summer were seen to be losers. A team with an overly brash GM who didn't know how to win now and was given too much leeway. This was compounded after the Rockets missed out on all the big names they chased. Morey's back-up aquisitions were seen as nonsense. "Sacrificing this season for flexibility" became the rallying cry for Morey haters everywhere. We lost 1/3 of our rotation from the previous two years for basically nothing (lost our own draft pick and gained N.O.) while not signing anyone of importance. He brought in Trevor Ariza, Joey Dorsey, and Jason Terry. A few guys Rockets fans had "grown to hate" for years. Donatas Motiejunas, an anointed "scrub" by a large percentage of "fans" was thrust into an important role. Our bench looked paper thin. So Morey went to the scrap heaps to sign a discarded scrub in Josh Smith and traded for a player who had become an afterthought in Brewer. Along came the trade deadline and Morey gave up "valuable assets" for Prigioni, a guy who looks like (and is old enough to be) a suburban dad who competes in triathlons in his spare time. None of these guys made any sense. Then some crazy things happened. D-Mo broke out and became a very solid player. Ariza, Dorsey, and Terry all became important contributors. Josh Smith and Corey Brewer, as improbable as it sounds put us over the top. -------- The fact is the Rockets played in arguably the toughest division in basketball history. They had to play 4 teams that made the playoffs 4x each, including the defending champs, two other 50 win teams, and a team with a top 5 MVP candidate in Anthony Davis. They won that division. They played the majority of the season without their starting PF from last year. The franchise center was injured for a large part of the season. They found a way to win. Then come playoff time, the guy who was the second best player on the team for most of the season, and likely the third best player on the team overall went down. The starting PG goes went as well. Both out for the rest of the season/playoffs. Guess what. The Rockets still continued to win. They got the #2 seed in one of the toughest conferences of all time. The playoffs started. The Rockets with their "lowly" coach go against a team that won a championship 4 years ago. A team that has a PG who the Rockets supposedly "missed out on" and a coach that should have ran circles around ours. The Rockets destroyed that team and moved on. Next round they played a team that had just dethroned the defending champs. A team that had gained immeasurable experience and maturity from grinding out an emotional win in their previous series. They take the fight to the Rockets and blow them out 3 times. The Rockets looked dead in the water. Game 5 comes, down 1-3, the Rockets finally show some life and win. Game 6. Down 19 in the 3rd quarter. The 4 guys who Morey had acquired this year along with the franchise center who was at one time thought to be lost for the season come out and have a 40-15 4th quarter, completing one of the most epic wins of all time. The Rockets blew that team out in game 7 and moved on. None of this has anything to do with luck or random arbitrary nonsense like "fake divisions." The Rockets, from managements down to coaching to the players have been resilient. That's the word to describe this team. They have faced adversity through injuries, roster shuffling, and more. The keep finding a way to win. Golden State is next. And I'm cautiously optimistic. Regular season record does not matter much. They have not faced this team in its current state ever before. We will give them hell. Either way. Everyone should be proud of this team.
