They are the second youngest team this year with an average age of 23. All the key pieces are 22 and under and are on pace to win 25-30 games. I like to compare this team to the 2002 rockets which were also considered young with a rookie Yao but even then he was 22 entering the league, with Francis 25 and Mobley 27. That team won 43 games. I can’t recall any other team except for the 2009 Thunder which had this many key players under 22 winning more than 30 games. But reading everyone’s post it feels like this season is a complete failure if they aren’t winning more games. Maybe it’s me but I’m seeing great things happen this year: Green, Sengun, KMJ, and Garuda have all greatly improved, and Smith is looking like the next Danny Manning. The flashes are there for a good team but I did not expect them to win more than 25-30 games being as young and inexperienced as they are with a head coach that is also growing up with them. So what was your expectation for this year and how many games should the rockets have won by now and should win by end of the year?
love the positiveness but it took 20 years for you to write 160 posts?...LOL 8 posts a year...you really pick your spots and chose your battles wisely....
Absolutely far too harsh. I didn't expect them to win more than about 20ish games .... that's about the pace they are on currently with 8 wins 39% of the way thru the season. We have to remember that they were a 20 win team last season who traded away their most productive offensive player and replaced him with a rookie .... even if he was toxic and selfish.
Keep in mind, a lot of folks haven’t experienced a Rockets tear down and rebuild in so many years. I simply believe that this is unfamiliar territory for these folks. They are concern about winning at the micro view but aren’t looking at the macro view of the team.
We were too soft on the Harden and MDA teams as reports came out that Harden took off during road games. Evens itself out.
We are tanking and need to remember that. We confuse that at times when we seem to try to win games. So we need to accept that the staff will do its best to lose the games it needs to in a draft with potentially 3 generational talents in it. It's why we don't play Sengun/Green/Jabari 35+ minutes and continue to let KPj play us out of games. Next year is the first year we'll actually go for wins so we can be frustrated then if we're still 9-21 or whatever.
Definitely way too hard on them. This season is going exactly how I expected it to, probably in the 20-25 win range. We've seen growth from pretty much everybody from last year (excepting maybe Christopher) Green's an emerging star, Sengun's getting more consistent and fouling less than last year, Garuba actually looks like an NBA player this year compared to last. Jabari and Tari are both doing better than I expected they would at this point of the year tbh. We just don't have enough pieces with enough experience to be winning the way people think we should. I actually also think there'd be a lot less negativity if you just removed the SOF's from the forum with their delusional ranting about how he's respectively: The best player on the team (Green,) a perennial all-star and MVP candidate (currently borderline starter level,) a generational talent (just lol, if he was he'd already be in the all-star conversation in his second year like all the real generational talents.) Because of their ridiculous expectations that could never be met, pretty much everybody else in the organisation is the target of their vitriol. That'll continue either til Sengun's traded, or the massively unlikely occurrence that he becomes a top 5 player in the league despite all of his clear physical limitations at the position.
We should have just as many wins as Orlando at 13, so I think the players need to step up. It seems they can hang with the best of them for most of the game but things fall apart in the 4th quarter. We could’ve won the past two games if they didn’t make the mistakes that cost games (turnovers, missed layups, missed free throws, etc).
Understatement of the year in the thread title. It's ridiculous the expectations people have of this team. The youngest teams in the league will lose more than most and look like a mess more than most. Doesn't matter who's coaching, doesn't matter the sets they install, doesn't matter how talented they are. We have the youngest rotation in the NBA by far and I would venture it's top 3 youngest rotations of all time if there was a way to research that. There are literally people saying "I don't care about wins but they should execute better" lol. Executing better = wins, you monkey. Other NBA fans would LAUGH OUT LOUD at you if you tried to make the case the Rockets should be better than they are performing.
It’s pretty obvious this team is just too young to be any good and Silas is following orders from the FO. He probably has one more year promised and then if they’re still bad next year, he’ll get the boot. No man can be that dumb with their rotations can they?
Green, Sengun, KMJ, and Garuda have all greatly improved, Martin sure, I'll buy he's better. Too bad mgmt decided to commit to the Tate Experience ahead of him. Green, better at drawing fouls, worse at shooting. Definitely not as good as the end of the year last year. Sengun, plays more than last year,does more of the same, has same weaknesses. Garuba went from totally unplayable to just unplayable on offense. Borderline role player. Let's get real, all of our "greatly improved"guys are not as good as Paolo Banchero right now. The point of the tank is to find a franchise player and we're 0-2 years. Orlando found one, we are still looking.
