I wouldn't trade last season's results. I enjoy last season. A lot. Too bad the rockets are severely underachieving this year. But there's no guarantee this doesn't happen regardless of what they did in game 6. This team doesn't have good coaching and at times I question the mental makeup. Two factors that form the recipe for underachieving.
Absolutely would trade last year's playoff success for this team's future. If we get blown out in Game 6 McHale is ultimately fired (ok... I assumed he'd be fired if we lost the Portland series and that didn't turn out that way...) They more than likely do not hand the reigns to JB and instead spend the beginning of the off-season searching for a new head coach. Said head coach puts his tentacles throughout the entire team during training camp and we come in much better prepared for this season and the immediate future. That Game 6 has done more harm than good as it allowed people to simply gloss over the blatantly glaring weaknesses this team has.
Never mind OP, these guys are just idiots. Any serious discussion gets full of this nonsense. I hear ya and I wonder the same thing. Truth is, we were quitters and losers if we had lost that series after game 3, 4 and the way we played for most of game 6. The media would've blasted us, that we just got lucky with our first round match up which we did. We lost our defensive identity we worked so hard for during the regular season in the play-offs. Still, I cannot help but think the team would've stayed the same, McHale would've been here and Harden would've been even less motivated. We probably would not think as highly of Josh Smith or Brew I reckon, but maybe the lack of defense and how they quit and fell apart would have forced us to re-consider our strategy and approach to the game.
The "what if" question is not a bad question. We won that game by a 1 in a 1000 chance. McHale might have been fired in the offseason, rather than after the season had started. Morey would probably have been a lot more aggressive in trades. Not sure if we had kept this group, we would be hungry and motivated like the OP said.
What if we won the finals? Then I would be content with this miserable season because at least we won last season.
I agree, the "what if" question is not a bad question--it's just too much damn fun to play with more whimsical alternatives. :grin: To add some gravitas to the discussion . . . OP is engaging in "counterfactual history," something Winston Churchill did in a 1931 book where he pondered the question, "What if Lee had won at Gettysburg?" So these kinds of what if scenarios are not necessarily absurd--although there are historians who argue that counterfactual history is a waste of time. From wikipedia entry on counterfactual history: So clearly, if we HAD lost Game 6, I can only conclude that Harden would indeed be playing better defense right now, and we would be 48-3, ahead of the Warriors.
Exactly. Would Brewer have received that contract? Would Morey have concluded that McHale is not the guy. Maybe we conclude we were further than a Donatus and Patrick away.
What if we had got a couple of breaks and won the first two games against the Warriors? What if . . .
