Coming into the season you offered this to me with wins over the Spurs and Warriors I'd take it. They were close in other games and some they just fell flat Consistency comes with time and this group is playing well Extrapolate this to the season and it is 52 - 28 (+/- 2 to complete the 82 games. ) (I said we were not a .500 team. That was just bad coaching) I am seem more effort - better coaching and consistent effort The youngsters are coming along nicely. Barring a CAN'T MISS deal I want to ride this season out with them. REMEMBER: D'Antoni was a hip check away from the Finals with the Suns. Rocket River
i wish we won the thunder and raptors game...7 losses seems a bit steep, but hopefully we get better.
i'm impressed with MDA so far. I was very much against his hiring but i'm happy to see him prove me wrong (so far). i like how angry he gets about defensive mistakes. never saw that from him on the sideline before. i'm also impressed with the motion in the half court sets, which i didn't think was a strength of his. i think we are a 50 win team. i wouldn't wager much higher than that because we havent seen ryno or ego miss any time yet. matching dmo would help as ryno insurance. his addition might push us further into the 50's. with dmo we are 12 deep. morey usually likes to make a small adjustment at the deadline. i can see some sort of consolidation move (2-for-1, or 3-for-1). if some combo of brewer/KJ/nene brings back a decent upgrade i think we can push into the mid-high 50's and look to pass the spurs (who i think will fall off late in the season).
The additional good news is that going 10-4 to close out the year might not only be possible, but probable given the opponents and a home biased schedule the rest of the year. 23-11 looks pretty good to me.
I think they did extremely well with a new sistem, new personal and a terrible schedule . They are starting to get confident and getting a nice swagger a contenders swagger . I hope they built on it . And by the way i love this team it's really fun to watch .
Impressed with MDA so far. Rebounding and defense seem to be improving. Gordon is even better than I thought. Anderson shooting 43% from 3! Capela doing exactly what we needed Howard to do. The role players like Ariza, Brewer, Bev are contributing. Young guys like Dekker and Harrel are looking great. Honestly Morey, the coaches, players all deserve a lot of kudos for this great start with a tough early road schedule. I still think Morey makes a consolidation trade at some point. Has to be done fellas. As fun as this team is playing it's just not likely we could take GS in 7. Adding Cousins at the cost of Capela, Dekker would be intriguing. Alternatively trading for Gay you could keep the young guys and either keep Gay or possibly sign Hayward in the offseason. Lots to be excited about. Good job Rockets!
This also means that we have had the least amount of practice time in the league. It's scary to think that we can still get a lot better.
I'm usually a huge pessimist and I have to say I am very impressed with this start. You can't ask for much more. A few of the losses were disappointing, but that happens to every team in the NBA, and way more likely to happen to a team thats just getting use to each other. On top of the fact that our record is good, we are actually fun to watch. Night and day from last year. Adding Dmo will give us more security for any injuries in our front court, but I don't see how we can add him and not mess with our rotation. You have to assume Morey and MDA like what they are seeing from Dekker and Harrell and would like to keep playing them their minutes if not more. Nene started the season looking good but I'd much prefer to see Harrell eat his minutes.
To be fair, we should win more than 52 games since our schedule has been literally the hardest as of now : https://www.teamrankings.com/nba/ranking/schedule-strength-by-other 13-7 during the most difficult stretches implies that our winning % will improve even more after that point on. I predict 55+ wins for this season.
