Don't give a crap about power rankings, it's all about conference seeding in the end. Remember when the texans were ranked In the top 5 week in and week out a few years ago? How'd that turn out..
You guys do realize the moment the Rockets get any shine they fall off a cliff, right? Who cares. It's better the Rockets fly under the radar.
The rankings are quite funny seeing as how we just beat several teams that are ranked higher than us and without having 3 starters. Hopefully we will take a Texas sized **** on the Clippers tonight.
Here's the yearly "let's freak out about Hollinger's rankings without knowing anything about it" thread. This is just based on pure calculations. Hollinger doesn't even work for ESPN anymore. There is zero team-based bias in these rankings. Yes, it has several flaws but what power rankings don't? At least these aren't subjective. This early in the season, this ranking is going to be completely wonky. I like looking at these rankings leading up to the playoffs to get a good picture of how the teams are doing with plenty of data points. This ranking is about what I expect specifically this season for the Rockets for these reasons: 1) On our "blowout" wins early on when everyone was healthy, we sat our starters through several 4th quarters that saw our piss poor end of the bench guys reduce 30 point leads into 10 point leads, which this ranking cannot see. We would show up much more favorably if we "Bellichick'd" some of these games. 2) Higher weight on recent games which we were without 3 of our starters for the most part. 3) The Memphis game is a huge swing on such a small sample size. Given all this, I actually think 12th best in the league is not bad with 3 of our starters missing. We are definitely a top 5 team with our guys healthy.
These rankings seem to be purely based on numbers. I don't think anyone is really thinking were the worst team in our own division.
I think that ranking is great. Most of the data is coming with Beverley, Jones and Howard out. It's coming from games we played before DMO showed such massive improvement. It includes flukes against Philly and OKC. I think it's safe to say if we played Chicago, GSW, SA, Dallas, LAC, Portland, Memphis right now we wouldn't come out of it looking very hot. I'm good with it.
The ESPN computer does not measure how much HEART a team has. The way the ROCKETS are playing through the injuries shows a lot of HEART..
During the midst of the Rockets' 20+ game winning streak we never made it to #1 on Hollinger's list so.. I stopped caring or giving it any thought.
I think this is about right. If the rockets don't improve that bench it's going to be trouble, trouble, and trouble.
Who ever rates us shouldn't view our team with bias from last season. They must assume we have the worst defense in the league and just look at our offensive numbers. Too me, our offense has dropped off, but our defense has picked up a lot more than our offense dropped off. So screw power rankings, I am thrilled with our team.
Why would we have been #1? Even with the 22 game streak we weren't close to the best record in the league.
