Revised Expectations after 18 Games

42-44 which isn't all that bad.

Next season I expect we will be 45-50 and then contender by year three at 50-55 wins.

 

50 wins and 6th seed, you heard it first.

 

I'm looking at 34-37 wins, but with the caveat that (as other posters in this thread have stated) that 34 wins this year is the floor in the team's development vice the ceiling. We don't have the team to tank - what we do have is the cap space, the assets and raw potential to get better sooner than later.

 

Feb trade... 53 wins

 

I still stand by my post Harden trade of 34-48. We have been feasting on the East. Hopefully I will be pleasantly surprised though.

 

40 wins; 13/14th pick, again.

Unless we have it on good authority that CP3 would be interested in the Rockets (a long shot), there's no reason not to tank.

 

What's the vegas line?

 

Wow, we have a lot of very optimistic people around here. The next couple of months are going to be brutal for Clutchfans.

 

Agreed. My beginning of the season prediction was 32-50... I still don't see them doing much better than that. 38 wins would be overachieving and is about the ceiling of what I could see this group doing this year.

 

As we enter the last 8 games of the season sitting at 41-33 with 2.5 games above 8th place, it's interesting to see how far people's expectations were from how they're actually playing out.

If we go .500 for the last 8 games, that's 45 wins. Not too shabby for the first year out.

They've slightly outperformed my expectations. So how far out was this from other people's predictions?

 

I predicted 50 wins and 6th seed as posted earlier on this thread. May get 6th seed but not 50 wins, looks like 45-46 wins to me, so close. Without a few McHale head scratchers, this may have been a 50-win team this year.

 

Can't believe you were right. Cud have made a killer at Vegas at the start of the year. Man i was predicting 33 wins.

 

call me a delusional lin fan but i really thought this team would go above 500 for sure and perhaps make the playoffs (before the harden trade).

not surprised at the tally but having ridden along with all the ups and downs to get here, i'm very impressed by the luck (good/bad), will, and perseverance this team has shown, and i'm glad i followed this ride no matter what happens.

 

I think we roll into the plays losing only 1 game. Teams begin tanking hard.

 

After 18 games it was already fairly obvious that we had a superstar on our hands and a solid team, so predicting a slightly above .500 record is not going out on a limb. Before the season started however, most had the Rockets around 30 wins, even with Harden.

 

I'm curious what you attribute them over-performing to? You and many others have maintained for some time that they are winning despite McHale. And, in fact, their win-loss record probably undersells how well they've performed overall; they've won by more points per game than they've lost by.

Its hard for me to imagine that the least experienced team in the NBA, who's roster is largely filled with players drafted in the second round or not at all, can have exceeded expectations by such an extent despite poor coaching. Just doesn't add up to me.

 

For me, I was basing my estimates based upon the Talent on the team, the system of play shown by the Rockets, and on the time I believed it would take for the team to establish individual chemistry, especially between Harden and Lin who are both somewhat ball dominant players.

I expected it would take at least 3 months for them to find a rhythm so didn't expect them to start performing well until January. Instead, they gelled almost immediately (first two games) and showed a refined offense by December. This is highly unusual regardless of the talent of the players.

Look at the Lakers, Nets, Miami... high talent players that took months and in some cases almost an entire season to develop a good on court chemistry between the players.

Chemistry isn't something that you can coach, it's something the players establish through familiarity with their team mates' preferences, styles and personalities. It is also affected by how well the team mates like each other.

While team mates who dislike each other can still develop good chemistry, it usually takes longer to develop on court chemistry with someone you dislike than someone you like simply due to it being more of a chore than a "labor of love" so to speak.

Once it was clear in December that their chemistry had gelled earlier than could be reasonably anticipated, I would have revised my win totals to closer to the 45 win mark, with a possible upside of 47-52 wins.

It's that margin on the upper fringes (and lower fringes) that are the most impacted by coaching. A competent coach *should* get at least 45 wins with the Rockets' talent and chemistry. A good to very good coach should have gotten more like 47-52 wins. A poor coach would have gotten more like 37-42 wins.

That said, I don't believe McHale is a poor coach. I just believe he's average in general and at times below average.

 

I slightly underestimated them.

They will probably end up with around 45 wins and fight for the 6th seed. The Lakers' and Mavs' struggles were unexpected. We are lucky that the 8th seed is easier to get than previous years.

 

You don't coach chemistry? Ummmmmmmmmmmmmm... As a lifelong participant in team sports, I have to disagree 100%. I actually couldn't disagree more. Literally one of the most incorrect statements regarding sports I've ever heard (other than the clown talking about how you don't increase the chance of injury after resting for long periods of time in the camel thread). You get on a team where the coach blows up your chemistry one time (and it's happened to me multiple times at different levels), and you'll see pretty clearly how much control over chemistry the coach has.

After all, the coach's job is to put guys who gel on the court together. I had coaches who would intentionally put guys he knew hated each other on the court together, just to make them deal with it. I had coaches who made us do football drills in college basketball so we could "learn to compete" against each other. They almost always ended in fights. It did NOTHING for team chemistry.

Also, I like how he is an average coach, but he draws your ire in almost every thread about him. I would hate to see how you would treat a consistently "below average" coach by your standards.