I'm curious as to the reason why this is. Just FYI: 3-10 in conference, 8-1 out of it. Yea it could be a bit too early to judge, but whatever doing it anyways. I have a few theories, but there are holes in every one of them, feel free to add your own. 1) The East is just worse. No other team has our kind of disparity, so I don't believe the East is significantly worse. 2) We've only played bad East teams / Good West teams. This isn't exactly true. We beat the Knicks but we lost to Portland... twice. 3) We matchup better against the East. Not really sure how to measure this, and even if there is I'm way too lazy to find it. 4) Harden has been figured out by the West, but not the East. While this MIGHT be possible... it really doesn't make sense. With all the videos/scouting playing 3-4 games vs 2 games doesn't really make any difference. Any thoughts guys?
On Dec. 10 2012 the Western conference had a record of 75-54 against the East in inter-conference games. The West has beaten up on the East for a long time, I thought everyone pretty much knew that. So, in my opinion the East sucks and that's why our record is so good against them.
Keep in mind our only loss against the East was against Miami which should have been a win, but apparently Chris Bosh got fouled by the air so he got some bogus free throws.
I think style of play has a lot to do with it. Bulls, Knicks & Celtics walk the ball up the court and play half court basketball. They do not excel or play fast break ball. The Rockets are good at most things except transition defense.
Teams in the East are arrogant and didn't come prepared. "Oh we're playing the a-bunch-of-no-names Rockets tomorrow? Let's party till the sun comes out!" They didn't know what killed them.
Some of it is just random coincidence. Some of it is that the East is legitimately worse than the West (but that can't explain it all... they're not THIS MUCH worse).
the east sucks , their are only 2 good teams in the east(Heat, Knicks) everyone else in the east isn't as good as the top 10 teams in the west
We have 9 games playing agaist Eastern team. 7 are home game, 2 are roads games. Those two roads game were the first 2 games of the season(Against Atlanta and Detroit, which we all know what happend) So, basically, we have home court advantage against eastern teams.
I wonder if the time zone is an issue? For the West, they are mainly playing "earlier" due to their habits/biological clock. So maybe the East is usually more tired at night :grin:
It's early so yes the numbers are exaggerated. But the east does in fact suck, after the Heat the east is very average. And the heat themselves are sleepwalking right now.
It's not about West has figured out Harden and East hasn't. Do you really think East don't scout Harden? Most of teams have played Harden as option #1 for the first time, East and West alike, Lets take a look at the best perimeter defenders in the league: Tony Allen - Grizzlies Igoudala - Nuggets Batum - Tailblazers Safolosha - Thunders MWP - Lakers (SF who can play small) Bradley - Celtics (DNP) West has some of the best SG defenders in the league! Here are the results of Harden shooting: 4-18 Grizzlies 5-15 Nuggets 16-42 Blazers 3-16 Thunder 10-37 Lakers ----------------- 38-128 29.7% 1 win 6 loss against teams with great perimeter defenders. That one win against Lakers should've been a loss if it weren't for Hack-a-Dwight. Here are Harden's shooting%: East 90/180 50% West 63/188 35.1% Harden is our go to guy and when he is locked down by opposition defenders, Rockets will lose more than they win. This is NOT a coincident that Rockets are 3-10 vs West and 8-1 vs East. WC might be the stronger conference, and our record do not truly reflect the inbalance. Our record has everything to do with how teams matched up against Harden. It's a sad fact that any team who can lockdown on Harden 1-on-1 can easily beat Rockets.
This team reminds me of those francis-mobley teams thay could only beat eastern conf teams. The rockets are just a ok team who can play well at home.
