Key to team success will be health of Harden, Bev, Gordon. Any of those guys go out for an extended period of time it could effect whether this team gets HCA.
Back in 2015 we had too many games decided in the final seconds. I think this 2017 team is able to avoid many games like this. However, this 2017 team lacks interior toughness. Capela is like a kid playing against Gobert and Adams.
This is a difficult comparison cause the 2014 just had so much injuries it was crazy. Can't imagine what that team could have done if we were healthier
Yes. There a tons of reasons why but the biggest for me is how we are winning games against certain teams. That 2014-2015 team won games versus bad teams but they had to rely on Harden being super clutch or praying that the other team misses its last shot. We were lucky and it was not going to be sustainable. This team has taken care of bad teams pretty handedly, especially over this winning streak. Good teams win close games. Great teams avoid them. Also, we beat the Warriors! That 2014-2015 team couldn't last a full 3 quarters against the Warriors lmaoo
IMO this team is the best one we've had since the 09 Yao/artest. Yes that 14/15 year was nice but our point differential is almost double of that year. And i terms of chemistry it's the best iv seen since that 09 team, everyone has bought in and knows there role. Also it helps that Harden is just a much different player/person on and off the court this year which in all honesty is the biggest difference. It always helps when your best player takes the last step of becoming a real leader of the team and trusting his teammates. Easily the main reason why this team is better. Imo harden last year could have had that team playing better had he led better off the court. When your MVP guy empowers young guys like dekker what do you think it does to guys like Gordon Ariza Capela who start. They really take off and it's showing. Good stuff!!!!
To be fair we always had bad officiating vs gsw last couple of years. This years game was fairly officiated.
That Rockets team won 56 games, was 2nd seed in a stronger Western Conference, and made the WCF. Plus had the true MVP, imo. Let's see what this team does. But most likely not. And uh, no. '15 Dwight was a much better than the Capela/Nene combo. Come on.
are u serious guys? a healthy dmo, tj, smith and dwight at the 4/5, a healthy bev at pg with terry backing up. harden, ariza, brewer at the wings. obviously they'r enot a better offensive team but overall, esp on d and reb, they're levels ahead of this years team. and its only like 25 games. will cf ever chill out with the premature homer knee jerk threads? no yall know rockets are still bottom 10 in defense in these 25 games? opponent ppg, fg%, 3pt%, and drtg. ppg and 3pt% jumped up a bit after crushing the mavs but before it was bottom 10. now just barely outside of and it should go back soon.
15 Dwight gave up a lot of layups, screwed up a lot of offensive possessions and ruined a lot of offensive rhytm and he didn't even play half the season Plus, were the rockets 15 to play rockets 17 , 15ers would have lost based on biased officiating alone.
That was the year DMo played at sub star to star level and most fell in love with him. Now Demo is plays here in various threads on CF.
It's interesting that we needed MDA to come in and slow things down. '14-15 team was 2nd in pace and this team is currently 11th. It actually shoots a whole in the old 'MDA inflates stats' narrative IMO. This needs to be brought up when anyone suggests Harden is only putting up crazy stats due to MDA. It's more due to the additions of EG and RA IMO.
I voted no. The 2014-15 team was 12th in offense and 8th in defense even with significant injuries. Dwight, Beverley and Dmo missed significant time. As morey has said, you need to be top 10 in both to contend. I believe that team was a contender and harden was an MVP caliber player with Dwight able to play at a star level in the playoffs. We basically just ran into a historic team in the playoffs. This year we have 1 star in Harden, tons of great role players and a really great system. I think the league at some point adjusts, I'm also surprised no one can stop this offense when we're a 1 star team. But maybe our offense can't be solved even though Morey has always wanted 3 stars to contend.
Let's hope this team is better than the 14-15 team - which barely survived against the Clippers and lost in 5 to GS.
