[Forbes] In The Early Going, The Houston Rockets Are The Surprise Team Of 2023-2024

Light the beam.

 

Surprised? Here?

Naw, everyone here saw all of this coming together. No doubt about that.

 

Corner turnt.

 

Rahat Huq should have a new job title - Master of the Obvious

 

Just remember the Jazz last season started off hot and ended 12th. Still too early to know if this win streak is because we are good or everyone else isn’t up to standards this early in season.

 

People keep bringing up the Jazz, but the two situations are not comparable. Most significantly, they actively tanked by trading solid pieces at the trade deadline. We, obviously, will not be doing that.

 

Mike Conley was probably their most even keeled vet savvy high iq player that contributed the most to wins outside of Lauri and they traded him. They wanted to tank. Not a comparable situations.

 

I think we make the playoffs this year, barring injuries to key personnel. I don't mean the play-in either.

 

That trade was just awful. Mike Conley, Malik Beasley, Jarred Vanderbilt, and Nickiel Alexander-Walker and two second-round picks for a protected first? Disgusting.

 

stopped reading at “old friend”

 

A couple of my CF brothers were lacking faith in the beginning, because they couldn't understand that the tank MANDATE was real and not some funny slogan to see who could bring the funniest TANK gif to the forum. Adding some quality vets and getting a blue chip coach to guide and instill structure to the kiddos has been a revelation to the media, but NOT to the hardcore CF members who have been witnessing the arduous PROCESS from the beginning! The Rockets weren't lucky to land Udoka....Udoka being a good coach was smart enough to see through all the mess that the previous coach had brought to the table and picked wisely the best landing spot where he thought he could succeed!

Having said the above, WE are still not contenders!!! BUT we are a LOT further along than the casuals thought we were going to be!!

Go Rockets!!!
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If we are a low seed playoff team this year with two 21 year olds leading in production that means we probably are on trajectory to be contenders when these guys are like 23-25 and I'm a-okay with that.

 

I expected them to win 50 games. No surprise here.

 

Of course they’re comparable. The Jazz outplayed all expectations for the first quarter to half of the season. Then they began to lose and shut guys down. The “comparison” is the beginning of the season with a team outplaying expectations. That comparison is valid at this point. Even if the teams and directions are not similar.

 

Nah, it's an awful comparison. First and foremost, the Jazz would have likely been squarely in the play-in tournament if not for the deadline trades. I don't think too many people on this board would be terribly disappointed in a play-in appearance. Secondly, the Jazz started off hot because they were so hot offensively that their subpar defense didn't matter -- when the offense cooled off later in the season, so did the team as a whole. Conversely, we are winning because we are playing team ball with strong defense -- teams built like that do not really have such extreme peaks and valleys.

 

You’re basically saying “these situations aren’t comparable because they’re different.” Totally ignoring the basis of the comparison — a team outperforming expectations early in the season. If you need to talk your way through it so you can convince yourself we won’t do the same, fine — but lol @ suggesting the situation isn’t comparable or relevant to our current state of affairs. You act like I’m predicting we will follow them exactly. Not at all. Just reminding people that they were a hot team early in the season and even before injuries and trades they quickly began to wilt around December, when other teams figured their own **** out.