The rockets have the the 4th best record in WC, but only the 7th best point differential. The rockets have been winning some close games. You can blame a lot of this on injuries. I think Morey said good team don't win close games because they blowout the other team since close games have a certain amount of luck involved. How good are the rockets? are they a good team or just somewhat lucky this year?
It looks to me like the Rockets are a really good team but injuries forced them to play extra hard in order to win games. They had to play their asses off to squeak out wins for a whole there. The past few games, the fatigue has seemed to catch up with them.
Combination, we are not as good as we think when we win a few and we're not as bad as we think when we lose a few. Due to injuries our guys worked indeed a lot harder, which is a good sign, but I am concerned that this will fade with everybody healthy. I am also concerned about our point differential, which is pretty bad considering our SOS and is a result of: - INURIES of course, but that alone is not an excuse - a lack of a good offense and in particular a lack of structure. This leads to having to working hard for every shot, a lot of iso ball, no ball and body movement etc. - shooting a lot of ill advised threes (in transition, early in the shot clock, contested). - no midrange game - terrible FT shooting - not running enough - having to play too many minutes for our starters. This leads to defensive lapses - bad help defense, as a team we are still not covering enough for each other - switching way too much on defense Some of this will be fixed and things will go better with the addition of Brewer and our healthy guys back, leading to less minutes for our starters, a set rotation, trust, chemistry and familiarity. What unfortunately will stay the same for us, barring a trade, is a reliable 2nd option to create for others and a big man off the bench. This along with McHale's deficiencies as a coach, our do whatever you want offense and hoisting as many 3 pointers as you want will become a big problem come playoff time. My last point concerns Howard who could become the X-factor for us if the rest stays the same. I seriously think that either he's mentally bothered by the injury and therefore not himself yet or still injured. A season-ending one is just waiting to happen if the latter is the case. If it's the former, that can be fixed but I'm not sure everything I'm seeing is due to his injury. The bad body language, the laziness to rotate, trying to block shots that are clearly goaltending or leaves his man wide open, demanding post ups and still the lack of wanting to be in a pick-and-roll situation. Let's hope he turns it around.
Granted we've had lots of injures, but the w-l record might be fools gold because of a top 10 easiest schedule up to this point. We're (14-1) in games against teams < .500, but only (5-6) in games against teams >= .500. We're (3-4) against top 10 defrtg teams and (2-6) against top 10 offrtg teams(hurt by missing Howard and Bev). Not a good sign for going deep into the playoffs.
The Rockets are a really good team, but I do think the Rockets are not as good as their record. We've mostly relied on Harden being otherworldly to make up for just about everybody else being fairly subpar offensively, and lately the defense has been noticeably slipping as well. We have some tough games coming up, and those will be a good measure for us.
That's BS. You could say that about a lot of teams. As far as the team is concerned, Harden IS part of the team and his playing at a high level or not has been only one factor. But a factor nonetheless. The team playing D has been largely responsible for the team's wins. Harden makes up for all of the missed free throws by Howard anyway.
Learning how to win close game is quite important...Most playoff games are close games, especially in the first round. If the Rockets learn to execute well during the regular season down the stretch of games, they should find ways to win when it matters.
Yeah 6-1 against the East(13-6 against the West) so far, but only 2 games (1-1) against >= .500 teams. Still have 23 games left against the East, 13 games against < .500 teams (ORL,NYK,BRK,CHA,MIA and IND) and 10 games against >= .500 teams (CLE,TOR,CHI,WAS,ATL and MIL). That leaves 33 more games against the West, 11 against < .500 teams (UTA,SAC,LAL,MIN,DEN and 2 against OKC) and 22 against >= .500 teams (SAS,DAL,LAC,PHO,NOP,POR,MEM and GSW). So 56 games left 32 against >= .500 teams and 24 against < .500 teams.
We can blame injuries. But the team is having the same issues in the games after Dwight's return. We'll see if the new guys obtained by trade changes anything.
Our offense just sucks. Nobody besides Harden can create shots, we don't get out on the break as much as we did last season. Hopefully Brewer can be a spark off the bench, 'cause we don't have one currently.
When we had Jones, our point differential was absurd. Once he comes back and with D-Mo now improved and bench improved with Brewer/Shved, we will probably start blowing teams out more often
Too lazy to do it myself right now, but I wonder what the differential breakdown would be for games where we are fully healthy vs games where everyone is out vs games where Harden and Howard played and so on and so forth. Hard to draw a lot from the overall differential when we have probably had the most unstable starting lineup and rotation in the entire league.
We had a very soft start to the season when Jones was playing (no disrespect to Jones) plus there's some talk he may not be back this season. But I do hope you're right.
