Please name the 6 teams that will finish ahead of us. And please explain to me how we won 50 games last year without 2 of our top-6 players but will fail to do so this coming season. Why does everyone assume that the only way our players can trend is down? Amen, Alpy, Reed, and Jabari can only get worse? The discourse here is so overwrought.
Sure jan keep telling yourself that. A team that treaded enough water to avoid the play in based on 37 year old Kevin Durant playing 36 minutes in 78 games - a strategy that was horrifically exposed by losing to a downright terrible Lakers squad when he left, is something that can be counted on again Sure, sure, sure.
LOL. Apparently not believing the Rockets are doomed = head up Stone's ass. It's a forum.... you want to post a bunch of doomer rhetoric then I'm going to push back against your depressing ass.
U can't be serious. Lakers & Twolves regressed. Nuggets lost Hardaway Jr and could lose Watson Memphis, Sacramento, LAC, & New Orleans are bottom 4 OKC & SA possibly top 2. Rockets are clearly a 50 win team. Portland, Utah are upcoming. Dallas has nothing to show from the Davis trade. Phoenix is nowhere close. Golden State will be old as hell. Rockets are a clear top 3 team in the West
Lakers will be worse. Was Golden St even .500 last year? And can you answer my second question, too, please? How are we a worse team right now than the team that played without a PG all year and still won 52 games?
Buddy they just barely won 50 last year based on their best player being a 37 year old playing his age in minutes for 78 games. Nobody wants to accept this but it's true! How likely is that to occur again? According to you it's nearly 100%
I never said it couldn’t. I just don’t buy the fact that the only way any of our guys can trend is down. And that’s being treated as a fait accompli by many people here.
This is a good argument if the entire roster was completely static, and no players ever changed or improved, and all of our injured players never played again.
The Young Corpse could not reliably beat a lottery level Lakers squad lead by a 41 year old when it mattered. If you think that's gonna sleepwalk to 50+ wins ok man
KD will not play the games and minutes tjat he did last season. The east has gotten better, so we’ll lose a few more games there. Utah, Portland, Phoenix, and GS could surprise. I predict when the 2027 win totals come out of Vegas Houston will he sub-50. It’s certainly not “ridiculous”.
West will be easier this season. Twolves traded Reid & Randle to the East Lebron probably going to the East Kawhi went East Rockets are getting players back. I guarantee if healthy Rockets will have a top 3 seed
You seem to think players are static or, if they change, it is only for the worst. You also neglect to note the injuries we were playing with. But whatever.
Just a gentle reminder that he's not going to get to go against teams coached by Ime Udoka so he's worthless
Keep telling myself facts? Your post hinged on the idea that they were only a few games out of the play-in, but they were 7 games better than the Suns and 2 games worse than 3rd seeded nuggets. Why didn't you mention that? I think your issue is you're focused on the Rockets and not the other teams around them. What have they done? That Laker team has only lost players, they are losing Rui, they just lost Smart, they just lost Lebron. Now they are the Lakers, you can never count out them randomly getting Jokic for a bag of chips or something, but this is one team that has clearly gotten a lot worse. Outside of Minny, what team without a doubt in the West improved to make you believe they are jumping us because...what? You're just assuming our players get worse...which fair enough, KD SHOULD get worse, but I do like to remind people that the Rockets were #2 in the West the season before without KD. The fact is, we don't have superstar players outside of KD, that much is true, but these are still REALLY damn good players that are able to beat up and bully most teams in the league. For them to not make the playoffs would mean they would be losing regularly to the bottom half of the NBA and I'm willing to bet outside of this forum where people seem to think we're a bottom 5 team for some reason (Just isn't the reality, sorry) most NBA fans would laugh at this opinion. The truth is, Sengun and Amen are good enough to be 2nd tier team in the West which is what we've been. Yeah, it sucks we're not as good as OKC or SAS, but this is still a good team, their record simply says its still a good team. I'm not being emotional about this, I'm simply looking at the numbers and results. This young core of ours, the record and results show, are a pretty good team. Championship level team, nope...but its still a good team.
The Rockets best player is only likely to trend down. The other players don't work together. I don't even know what else there is to say This team was miserable to watch for almost all of 2026. If you project magic improvement like Sengun or Thompson becoming competent 3 point shooters sure I could see organic improvement but that's not likely to happen. I don't need to look at "on average" or pretend like there will be som statistical melange of incremental improvements - all the flaws of this badly constructed roster were on display last spring. Good luck & Godspeed getting that back to 50 wins with Marcus Smart & Bogdan
