The Rockets are 10th in the standings but only 6 games from the top spot. We have 35 games left and these are 18 of them... New Orleans x 3 Phoenix x 2 Denver x 2 Portland x 2 Sacramento x 3 Dallas Boston Lakers Golden State San Antonio Utah ------------------ = 18 tough games The Kings are not the same team we faced last time. The Rockets will have to win most, if not all, of the games they are supposed to win and then some to make the playoffs. Some of those teams many assumed we would catch either starting playing better (Jazz) or upgraded (Lakers). I have heard a lot of people saying that the Rockets have an easy remaining schedule. Over 50% of our remaining games are listed above and they don't look easy. Gonna be tough down the stretch... brace yourselves for the real possibility of no Rockets basketball after April 16th.
like i said, this yr, the lower 5-8 seeds can all beat the first 1-4 seeds. the west is so much more balanced now, and yet altogether much more competitive. i'm excited. i still think by the end of this month, we'll be ROLLING. tmac gets healthy, offense gets better, yao stays in his groove, PF position continues to be a strength, brooks getting better to stabilize the PG position -> fans should be
utat, denver, portland, and GS schedules are just as bad...denver's being even worse with 22 of their remaining games against +.500 teams
Our February schedule is fairly easy and we have a chance to go 13-0.. But our March schedule is pretty brutal
Those are the teams I think have the biggest chance of falling out of position. Utah is on a roll right now that subtle Korver trade didn't even get much hype but it's been great for them.
why are u guys looking ahead? we have to take it one game at a time. but great teams are great teams b/c they win, regardless of the schedule. if we want to be taken seriously, we have to beat the teams we're going to face anyway. it isn't like we'll face some cupcake in the playoffs. let's handle our business right now, gain some confidence along the way, and tighten up our seat belts and let's go for a ride. i have a lot of confidence on this team. a lot of people on this board might not, but i felt we can still be so much better. but i remain confident b/c one of our weaknesses (ability to close out games) has suddenly become a strength. we all know this team can hang with ANYBODY for 3.5 quarters. it's all about finishing games. so when we face the mavs again, it'll come down to that last 5 minutes. and when we do face them, we'll be ready.
Debbie Downer in da house! Couldn't you have just posted this in your other Sky-Is-Falling-and-the-Rockets-Suck thread? Seriously, BB, it's one thing to be "realistic," but entirely something else to be constantly, overbearingly pessimistic.
true true true,i wnated korver in the rockets uniform.he is a really good fit in adleman system and he has size too
its not like we have so much ground to cover. if portland beats denver on monday and we beat minny, we'll be a half game out. you need to have a little more faith, its far from impossible.
if my count is correct, we were scheduled to play 41 total games against the teams you listed. We've played 23 of them so far. So 23 out of our 47 games played have been against those teams. Since 18 out of our last 35 are against those teams, that's pretty much the same ratio (48.9% vs. 51.4 %). But looking at your list, I'd rather have more games left against Portland, Sac, and Denver than Dallas, SA, or LA. It should also be noted that we have finished our season series against 2 of the best teams in the east, Detroit and Orlando. Then take into account that we have 20 home games left and only 15 road games. So what I'm trying to say is that the schedule coming up is significantly easier than it was up to this point. It's all relative.
Strength of Schedule so far for us and our competitors. Rockets .521 Warriors .496 Blazers .516 Nuggets, .494 I won't mention the other teams because I don't feel they're likely to drop out of the race. At the end of the year, SOS should be about the same for each team within a conference, as we all play about the same schedule(no division bias in scheduling). So no matter what you think of our upcoming opponents, we still have the easiest schedule among our competitors.
Looking at the remaining schedules it is entirely possible that the ROX will end with the regular season with 50 wins, further DEN will end up with 48 wins, POR with 46 and GS with 50. In such a scenario we would be either 7 or 8 seed. ROX could be higher an even higher seed if SAS falls apart, which may occur given their injuries. I do not see how we can get better than 6 unless NOH also stumbles.
That's a mute point if you believe the Blazers Warriors and Nuggets are better than the Rockets as Brookstroll does.
Exactly. A few other important things that seem to have been overlooked by the OP: * We've won 80% of our games since the beginning of the year. * Over that same span, we're 7-1 on the road. * Sure, we can't play 80% for the rest of the year, but playing just 65% will get us 50 wins and 6-8 seed. That's VERY doable -- as badly as we played for the first two months, we're at 57% for the year right now. * We'll be playing the rest of the schedule with a decent grasp of Adelman's system -- something we didn't have for those first couple of months. Doom and gloom? Hardly. Future's so bright, I gotta wear shades.
I hate debbie downers, but i also can't stand extreme optimism... One step at a time buddy.. The West is VERY deep right now if you haven't noticed. Not only do the Rockets have to play VERY WELL, they have to get LUCKY.. Face it, right now the Playoffs are a long shot but it's do-able. We just need some chips to fall our way..
