Are we a team that is able to play more consistently than most and thus able to win more games than some teams that may be better than us but lack the same professionalism/heart to consistently bring their A game to the table every night. Case in point, we beat LA and the Bulls in their home court with not a whole bunch on the line and we won because we put out a better effort. A more consistent effort. A week later 2 teams below us come in to our house in 2 playoff intense games, quite possibly the most important games to date and they both kick our asse quite handily. There is no logic behind this given how we played just recently on the road. I expected our best effort and at least 1 win. Even in the 1 loss I would have expected a wire to wire game. What happened? Where was the sense of urgency, the effort. Some people say Lowry killed the mojo, others blame it on McHale’s poor coaching or Scola’s flopping or Dragic’s sudden inability to be aggressive or even that we have too many white people on the court. And while all of those may have contributed, what if the underlying factor is we are just not as good as our record indicates and when Phoenix and Utah put out there best effort they are better than us. So then I have to ask myself what is Morey building here?. Are we a team that will ever be as good as our record. That was the problem with Oakland A’s they could never win a post season series in spite of having great records in the regular season. Is that what we are a team that wins more games than we should. Are players like Lee and Scola and Parsons the type that give it all every game but in reality don’t have another to step up their play for the most important games? And what we see as a let down in reality is the other team stepping it up and us just not having any other gear to match. Admittedly I do not have any real data to support this. And certainly there are other factors that can contribute to our poor play in the most important games. But if it is true that we played our best and our best just wasn’t good enough than you have to ask yourself what are we trying to achieve. Are we stuck in the mediocrity treadmill. Because after watching the last 2 games it’s hard to imagine that we could beat SA or OKC in a series they bring out their A game. Yeah I know most don’t want to hear that. And I witnessed some of our great play after Lowry went down and Camby was acquired and thought this team looks good and we could do some damage in the playoffs. I even envisioned us making it to the 4th or 5th seed and killing the Clippers and then watch out NBA Clutch City is back. But all that Clutch dreams disappeared on Wednesday and Friday and reality set in. We are who we are. A mediocre team with character but lacking in talent. And talent wise is closer to the bottom than we are to the top. What’s even more scary is we may lose our best player this summer and we will probably end up with only 1 draft pick that is losing it’s value every day. It’s times like this that I envy Portland. They aren’t as good as us but they aren’t that far off. And they should end with two solid lottery picks, plenty of real cap space and two solid players to anchor that team. LMA and Batum are solid. If they sign Dragic they are set at point and they can hope for Beal who may be a more athletic Ray Allen and hope Sullinger drops for their second lottery pick. Yeah there is a lot of wishful thinking there. But it is all realistic. What is are wishful thinking. Hope that the Knicks suck the rest of the way going and we get the 12th pick. I know losing sucks but everyone foregts the losing once you get that star to build around. No one talks about how SA tanked to get Duncan but that was the worse display of tanking I ever witnessed. And what do we have now? We have a very solid team full of players who put their best on the court day in and day out but when it is do or die we are just not as good as our record. How do we get to championship contention from here? I contend that having a team of overachievers is the worst way to do it. I think Morey may be the best GM to bring in if you already have the stars. He would be great on the Heat or even the Blazers to find a bunch of overachievers and gems to build around those stars but right now we are just playing ourselves out of good lottery pick and IMO we may just be prolonging mediocrity. Yeah I know He’s just following the bosses orders but the bottom line is we might just be worse than our record and that’s a hard pill to swallow with no real hope for change. Of course all of this is just my opinion and Lowry and Dragic could start playing amazingly together and Patterson could become a real low post threat and Martin could come back and be a real scoring threat and we could beat the Nuggets 2 games in a row and change everything. And I would be happy to be wrong. In the end I just want us to get back to championship form as quickly as possible. But the possibility that this rebuilding while winning experiment may not work has crossed my mind. Let the flaming begin.
I think of it as a deep roster in a strike shortened year always has better results. Morey better capitilize on the strike shortened season that made all his players look better except Kevin Martin. Next year? If he does not improve this roster? Its back to 500 and not a few games above.
Maybe but after losing all of our 09ers and Lowry and Martin we seem to have improved until our 2 biggest games of the season.
However true this may be.... geez, bad time for a demotivational post, can't this wait till our playoff push is over?
I wonder how could be if Kyle would not been returned in team... I have one more question. I'm from Slovenia and I read this forum since Goran came to Houston... my knowledge of English is poor. Can you tell me, what word "flopping" mean? this word is frequently used with Scola... does it mean falling on the floor? thank you.
Flopping means to act as if you are fouled by exaggerating the impact of contact with another player. This can happen on offense, or defense. Luis Scola is an example of a flopper on the Rockets. The Utah Jazz perfected this as a team and will never win an NBA Championship because they are cursed to burn in hell for all eternity.
People wont say it but i will The refs have been favoring us a LOT in these games the past couple of weeks for some odd reason, the Suns game on Friday convinced me that Stern wants us in the playoffs. When Joey Crawford is making bs call after bs call againist the suns in the 4th quarter to bring them back, and almost helped the Rockets pull that game out if Bud hits that 3 its obvious Stern wants us in the playoffs, some will give all of the credit to Dragic haha. But if you just watch the games and how they are officiated especially the important games without your homer glasses on, you can see it too The Jazz lost to the freakin Hornets the same night we lost, everytime we lose a game, it seems all of the teams chasing us lose a game as well. Isnt that odd Stern does not want us to have that extra draft pick in a deep draft, also knowing that we can sign Dragic even if we miss the playoffs, and trade Lowry to the Blazers or the Jazz for both their lottery picks, would give us more ammo to get younger and better if we draft right( with a genuis like Morey) Stern is helping us win games, maybe to make up for the Pau Gasol gaffe at the beginning of the season, but also to spite us out of a draft pick. But i think Morey is already prepared to make a trade with Blazers including Lowry. But Stern could throw a monkey wrench in the whole equation if the Nets wind up with a top 3 pick( hence they would retain it) If you see Joey Crawford in this upcoming home and home series with the Nuggets, then you will already know whats going on
Because we experienced the Jeremy Lin syndrome with bunch of players Lowry at first, playing like God And then Goran plays like God Lee plays like super good Parsons is like super rookie Problem is we don't have players that has proven to contribute at a good rate night in and night out, we get wins with random players overachieving going on crazy hot streaks.
The thing that bothers me the most is the lack of emotion, passion, physical play and toughness in times when the refs make a bad call or the opponent beats on us and play physical. First let me the discuss regarding the refs and our willingness to accept any call except for Lowry & Scola though they whine more than actually challenging a ref and get angry. If you watched during the championship days, all the guy would go nuts (playoffs even more) when the refs make a blatant terrible call. Olajuwon would walk up to a ref, get in his face; Maxwell would get angry and start to curse, talk to the opponent saying it's bull****; Thorpe would point out what happened on the other side of the court when they didn't make the call; Elie would go jumping, Cassell would grab the ball etc. They let the referees know they made a mistake and the whole crowd would get behind them even more. Right now, this team is not doing that and that makes a team worse than it can be. We are not playing up to our full potential, not making use of emotions enough and the influence you can have on the referees and the game in general. When you are passionate about winning, you should be ready to do whatever it takes. When players are into the game, you can just see it and I'm not seeing it from this group or any Rockets team in the last few years. When you're into the game, you do not worry about getting a technical or anything like that. The do or die mentality is lacking which is why we are worse than our record, which will show come playoff time. The second is everything that we do or rather don't do when the opponent gets physical with us. #1 is we flop, which has been beaten to death so will not get further into that. #2 is we allow guys to just get into the paint which should not be going unpunished. It's okay to just hit a guy with an elbow or knock someone over to send a message. When we foul, we should foul hard, which we NEVER do! The way Scola barely touched Dudley on the break giving up an and-1 is inexcusable #3 is we allow guys to pound on us without retaliating. The stomp by Love is just one example. We didn't even try to get in his face about it which some said is mature, I call it lack of being into the game. You don't have to stomp him or start a fight but at least do something. Push him, give him a sneaky elbow, just let him know you are a man and don't take ****. We have had guys to take care of that in the past: Mutombo had it in him, Artest, Rafer, Francis, Maxwell, Elie, Cassell etc. Right now, we have no player to do that for us. So as a team, we better step it up or else we get rolled over in the playoffs and get embarrased. We are a good team but also a 'nice' team, our players are too nice and that makes a team worse than its record. When you don't have a do or die mentality and lose two important games to teams right below you in the standings, that tells you something. We do play some balls and have it in us to come back and play well despite the referees bad calls which is good. The road trip we went 4-0 but even against the Kings and Blazers we didn't show that sense of urgency and almost blowing big leads again. Rockets of the past have been like this too so there's no reason they can turn it around come playoff time. However, I need to see that fight first before I believe we are capable of being as good as our record thus a playoff team.
Dude, you can't be serious with this. But I guess every team has a small collection of individuals who are convinced that Stern is an evil puppet master that has it specifically against them.
Its not that we are worse than our record: its called INCONSISTENCY. He is pleased to meet you :grin:
We are like the Nuggets these past years. Okay regular season record because of depth and many good roleplayers, but early playoff exits because we lack true star power.
calm down. I would not like to be with you guys inside bomb shelter. It would end up being like a twilight zone episode. We are what the record shows. A team that can win or lose to anyone. When the shots, shots they make on average, don't fall it is going to be a tough night. This team never quits though, not since we were 3-7 at least.
This is the NBA. Teams coast in the regular season...the Spurs this season are a classic example of that. From the better teams in the league, you're not going to get all out play from night to night. The Rockets, however, deliver on that as much or more than any team in the league. We beat teams because we out hustle them. But I have very little confidence that if they're both playing at the same intensity level, that there are many playoff teams this team could beat over a 7 game series.
We will find out tonight....if the team fails to hustle and box out and let's Faried go off then its gonna be long off season
