In all seriousness, who am I? I don't run any active alts, but for all I know everyone on CF is just someone's alt and he's having a massive schizophrenic conversation with himself.
by far the worst seasons I’ve watched are 05-06, and last year I’d say the hardest for me to watch was probably 05-06 if I’m being honest…that old ass team combined with JVG’s offense and no T-Mac for half of it last year sucked too, but there was plenty of fckery, and sometimes fckery can be a bit entertaining, and the game threads could be fun at times 01-02 was a terrible team, but it had Steve Francis who I really enjoyed…it’s similar to this season for me
If you want to talk about two years of misery, consider the alternate timeline where the Rockets run it back with Westbrook, Harden and PJ Tucker for the last two years: 2020 - 21 season: Slightly improved over the bubble team during the regular season with Wood as the full time center, but Harden gets injured in the playoffs and the Rockets are probably a 2nd-round exit team at best. They have two picks in the draft, their own, somewhere in the 20s, and Portland's (trade for Covington). They don't make the trade for Sengun, because they don't have either the Milwaukee pick or the Washington pick. Let's give them Garuba and Christopher for argument's sake; if you really want to credit Stone and say he'd pick the most win-now, older guys in Herbert Jones and Ayo Dosunmu, I'll even give you that. 2021 - 22 season: Harden remains somewhat injured and is not the every night guaranteed 30-7-7 ; Russ continues his descent into whatever he is now, the Rockets are basically the Lakers, and despite having a few young role players play well, the Rockets barely scrape into the play-in round, where they're promptly dismissed by CP3 and the Suns in 5 games. Now in the offseason, you have Harden, Westbrook, Gordon, and Wood all with one year left on their deals, who might leave for nothing and have almost no trade value since they're all expiring. You have zero young cornerstone players, and OKC owns your next three drafts through swaps and trades. You're not getting 7 years of picks and pick swaps for a 33-year old Harden who is going to demand a max extension. 2022 - 26: COMPLETE...MISERY...AND IRRELEVANCY while OKC builds a dynasty on the back of terrible Rockets seasons. Right now, as sour as the end of the Harden Era was, he honestly did Houston a favor by demanding out when he did. Starting the rebuild even one year later would have dramatically reduced the value he would have returned. And James was absolutely right, the Rockets weren't good enough with him, and it wasn't something that could be fixed. Little did everyone know, one of the reasons the Rockets would never be good enough was because of his own declining physical condition...
Was 05-06 the Charlie Ward-Clarence Weatherspoon-Rick Brunson year when Yao and T-Mac were hurt? If so, yeah that year totally sucked. If I recall correctly, the only thing to get excited about that year was John Lucas III coming off the bench.
Gotta stop with the spoiled mindset. We were due for a complete tear down. Three years of being a bottom 10 team ( I think we won’t be bottom 5 next year) is just par the course. It’s just been awhile Unless you are going to die in the next 3 years, you should see the rockets in the playoffs with the expanded playoffs.
On game days, I used to get kinda hyped up, glass half full kind of way. As the season winds down, and I zoom back, to see all the 'L's we racked up, I'm reaching my limit. Kind of relieved that the season is ending. Need a break from all the losing.
Curious how they were worse? Their record was significantly better, they won 50% more games and then they went to the finals shortly after that as a result of getting the top draft picks. Back then you were guaranteed to get draft picks not this lotto system, correct? Also since the players were more developed and coming out of college, you had a better idea of what you were getting in the draft. Now if you are an awful team, what do you get? You get a lottery chance. Honestly we have all been quite delusional , it is nice to see Jalen and KPJ drop 30 point games and lose but soon we will need to actually win, and we may realize they may not be capable of actually doing it, we will see though. I think that not only are the Rockets getting use to losing, but we as fans are starting to get use to it as well. I look to see if KPJ and Jalen scored 30+, look for flashy highlights from Jalen and Sengun. The reality is this is an awful defensive team, and as a unit has shown zero signs of wanting to stop any team. I am still somehow excited about our draft pick, i have started to forget what its like to compete with Steph and the Warriors and make playoff runs. Now I look to see where ping pong balls land.
Not miserable at all because there's an obvious plan to accumulate high end talent through the draft for 3 years. If you're expecting wins then sure, misery is expected. Fortunately for me i wanted us to go this route post-Harden given our lack of flexibility to acquire multiple stars via trade/free agency... thanks to the worst trade in Rockets history - Westbrook
This. I actually enjoyed it more than the last two years we got into the playoffs. You could just tell those Rockets weren’t right and losing in a very familiar fashion was getting very old.
The game thread and the meme squad made this season fun relative to how bad it actually was. Shout out to the memers.
100% honestly I hated the 2005 Mavs game 7 loss and the 2009(?) loss to the Lakers due to injuries more than the sum total of the last 2 seasons. The two Jazz series in between, too. And also the 2018 Warriors series. And all of the other Warriors series. And the 1998 Jazz series. Losing seasons are part of the price of Fandom. Losing when it matters, especially due to injury, rigged games, ineptitude, and historical unclutchness hurts my soul forever. I'll forget the details of these seasons. I'll remember the details of all time bad luck and NBA hatchet jobs. (Even non Rockets series like LA vs Sacramento, Phoenix vs San Antonio, or Dallas vs Miami).
I started watching the Rockets when they were still in San Diego .... knowing the next year they were moving to Houston, so I've seen more than enough bad. 1982 & 83 were worse by far .... 14 wins followed by 29 They won 17 games last year in only 72 starts that's 3 more in 10 less starts than 1982. The Rockets are the reason we have a draft lottery .... This years team was actually fun to watch .... even with the real tank commander running the point more often than not and the other tank commander not bothering to play defense. I'm glad the Jalen Green experience finally showed up in February .... Christopher was my favorite Rocket by the 2nd summer league game ....
