If the Rockets win 35+ this year, that means the Rockets will be a better than average team the rest of the year. For that to happen, Jalen Green would likely need to become the best basketball player on the planet. I could live with that.
In order to win 28 games, we'd have to go 23-38 the rest of the way. Regardless of who our coach is, I just don't see that happening with a team this young. That said, I want the best possible shot at a #1 or #2 pick next summer. I want us to improve this season, but not enough to jeopardize our chances at that. If we end up with #3 or worse, we pick the best available PG and move from Tank mode into Start Learning to Win mode.
I think they will win 26-28. To get to 27 wins they have to win 35% of their remaining games...that's not a high winning percentage especially against a soft schedule.
Big problem with applying these tiers listed and applying it to this belief of a "soft" schedule isn't really valid. The balance of teams sorts itself out by mid season. A team like GS who is currently .500 is actually a tier 1 team and teams like miami/bulls won't be below .500 teams by seasons end. A team like utah is actually a bad team but considered a tier 2 team from a fluke start. When you're literally one of the worst teams in the league and clearly, the schedule doesn't exactly get soft.
Yeah this is a good point with the tiers shifting, Utah is probably the best example. I'm interested to see us play more games against gutter teams. So far it's just OKC and Orlando and we beat them both pretty comfortably. Obviously it's just two games and we shouldn't extrapolate that out to "we'll win 100% against lotto teams" but maybe the rockets will show themselves to be a step above lotto teams? We've got two games against the spurs coming up as well as another against the Magic, those are games I'll be watching out for. Draft-wise that would obviously be bad, but development-wise it would be nice to see.
If we look at the entire month of December. They play SA on 12/8 and Orl on 12/28. Every other game is a team that is clearly better than the Rockets. January: They play Utah 1/5, Det 1/28. Every other team clearly better Feb: OKC 2/1 & 2/4 & 2/15 March: SA 3/4 & 3/5 Det: 3/31 the reality is getting to 25 wins would be an absolute mountain climb for a team this young and inexperienced in the early stages of a full rebuild
I thought about this as well when I did this analysis. Utah is already a tier 2 team for instance, and while teams like GS, Minnesota, and Toronto may move from Tier 2 to Tier 1, it doesn't really affect the projection because the Rockets have already lost to those teams lowering their tier 2 winning percentage - in other words, if anything, the fact that these teams are actually Tier 1 means the projection is shooting too low and we should win more games. All in all though, I think it will balance out and not make a whole lot of difference.
Wrong. and with this wrong logic it creates a false optimism of your "soft" schedule claim based on tiers that aren't even how the season is going to play out
Just for a small dose of realism here Assume we DO go 23-28, and end up with 28 wins. That is a 34.1 winning %. There are currently only 5 teams in the entire NBA under 40% - so we would appear to be comfortably within the bottom 5 teams anyway. I get what you are saying though: ideally we want to be bottom 3 if we want max chance at picks 1-4. We have the trump card up our sleeve of an experienced tank commander at the helm anyway, who has a proven record of losing post-all star break (17% win record the last 2 seasons post ASB). So if we need to shut it down, we can shut it down!
Yes, it's certainly putting our Wemby / Scoot dreams in jeopardy. Might be worthwhile to start giving guys rest games.
Updating (not the tiering as that takes more time so will do periodically) Overall: 6 - 16 Tier 1: 1 - 9 Tier 2: 3 - 6 Tier 3: 2 - 0 That's an incredibly brutal schedule for a bunch of 19-22 year olds: 18 games against teams competing for the playoffs compared to just 2 below 45% winning percentage. With the rest of the season: Tier 1: 17 games Tier 2: 27 games Tier 3: 17 games If the Rockets win x% of their remaining games they will end up with 30% - 24 40% - 30 50% - 36
Well if we need to start contemplating resting 20 year olds because it is ruining our tanking chances, that is an excellent problem to have because usually you bring in the 20 year olds because they will help you tank.
BTW this is Post of the year material - and good analysis. I expect the Rox to start winning more and people to not understand why, but this is why. We are 4-4 in our last 8 games and have beaten 2 playoff teams in Phoenix and Atlanta.... Would love for you to update this thread @Sweet Lou 4 2 this is your baby, and well spotted. DD
