The roleplayers have improved and the whole team is better now than earlier in the season. They are on a 6 game road winning streak. The Rockets have only lost 4 games since the beginning of the new year. This gives them a great record of 12-4(0.750) for 2008. At that current pace, those 35 games would be 27-9(0.750). Of course, he isn't starting any thread on that.
A joke that is 10 games over .500 and a game out of 1st place in their division. If they are a joke, what are the Rockets?
stop looking at the record, and start looking at the team, or at least one game at a time Do you realize we could be on a 16 game winning streak right now? The 4 losses standing in our way of that... @ Boston - No Tmac, almost won without him New Orleans @ Home - No Tmac, Even without him we should of won Philly @ Home - Should of Won, but you could still bring up the No Tmac factor Utah @ Home - No Yao These are pretty bad excuses because the Chances of any team going on a 16 game winning streak are pretty slim but the main point of what I'm Trying to say is that when Yao and Tmac are both in the lineup we have good chances of beating these teams.
Every game is tough from here and on. If we take care of business against lesser teams and split with your "tough" teams, we will make the playoffs. We have shown that we can do that.
A couple of things: How about that week in March when all the teams we play are like top 5 in the league, lol. That will be a week of testing. I'm glad we are winning (thought barely) these last few games right now against bad teams, because that's all we are gonna play (with the exception of 3 teams (4 games, cavs twice for remainder of february)) for the remainder of february. I'm glad, though. we've officially finished the toughest part of our schedule and we did it with key players missing at times. I haven't looked at april at all, but the aforementioned week in march looks to be our only trouble spot for the rest of the season. just think. imagine if we did not lose to the hornets and the sixers and the jazz and still won all of the games up until now. what a roll we'd be on!!
I'd really like to see us beat ALL or MOST of the tough teams, too. this team has to expect that, too, if they want to win a championship (or at least get to western semis).
Let's say we win a significant amount of the other games, since the NBA really is a have and have-not league with only the Pacers and Kings really being tweener teams with some talent still on their roster. And mayyybe the Sixers. So 14-3 for the other 17 games. Of the other games, I predict that we sweep Denver and Portland (like Sacramento, THEY aren't the same teams we faced earlier either), take one apiece from New Orleans (we would have beat them last time with T-Mac, just needed a finisher), Phoenix (we've established a template for beating those smaller teams that front Yao now that we have decent offense from the PF position, plus we already beat them once this year going into Yao a ton), Utah (that last loss really pissed us off, they made it a dirty game and we'll be ready with Yao back for the rematch), Dallas, and two from Sacramento (sure they're better, but you have to give the Rockets some credit). I would give us Golden State also, but it's the fourth game in five days, and that stretch will not be fun. So that amounts to 10-8 out of those "hard" ones. (14-3) + (10-8) = A 24-11 finish for a 51-31 record and the 6th seed in the playoffs. February will give us significant momentum to go into March and perform well. I think we will do much better than Brooksball thinks, but it really just comes down to how much faith you have in your team. I know it's not fun to be let down all the time, but haven't we gotten some reason for optimism the last 10-15 games?
Point understood. My own level of optimism is admittedly lessening... Anything can look bad though, when you only show the bad imagery. With the positive content hidden from view...There's a difference between, for example, saying Yao's last 7 games he's averaging 2 more turnovers a game. When he could have been attempting twice as many passes during that stretch and assisting more. Rockets remaining schedule doesnt look too TOO favorable in its entirety, only the current February stretch. Gonna be a tough road to hoe for these guys... of the 14 teams in the west only 5 had losing records for their last 10 games. Rockets went 7-3 their last ten. So did basically everyone else over them....just brutal.
Yup thats the good thing about it. Everyone in the west is about to start playing each other and someone have to lose.
the other "tough" teams fear us, because we are tough too. we can beat the crap out of anyone. NOH fans might be counting 3 losses in advance now. can't we have a little confidence?
At the begining of the season we disscused about championship ring, at the end we discuss about making the playoffs, isn't that tragic? We're happy that team is winning lately, but are we really happy how team is performing? 27-20? C'mon, you can do better than that.
Only Cleveland and New Orleans are teams that we could lose to. Any other games are ones we are suppose to win.
Every one of those games against teams ahead of us is a chance to take their spot. Just take the attitude that for us the playoffs start on March 2, and it'll be long and bruising. We'll need every bit of that 11-man rotation.
