Rockets have lost very winnable games to the weaker conference. What gives? Miami, Indiana, Cleveland and Chicago should've all been Ws. 14-10 against the West by comparison.
Rockets are bad on the road. that's been true all year long. Indy, well Hali happened. that says enough
3 out of those 4 are road games, and we suck on the road. Also, lately we've really been missing Dillon and Tari. I think both of those guys are huge difference makers, and this team also lacks depth, so when we have guys out it really hurts us. Here's how we've done with and without those two guys on the court - Overall: 18-18 (50%) - 42 win pace With Dillon Brooks: 15-13 (54%) - 44 win pace With Tari Eason: 12-10 (55%) - 45 win pace With both Brooks and Eason: 11-8 (58%) - 48 win pace Without Brooks and Eason: 7-10 (41%) - 34 win pace
A lot of stronger Offenses come from the East..... Bucks, Boston, Philly, obviously Pacers and Atlanta....
I'm not sure what to make of most of this season. I think we've improved a lot, but so many of these games had us missing key players or the opponent missing key players.
None of those teams are gimmes, they're all close in talent level with us, and we played a lot of them on the road.
weird how we struggle against some teams. How many of those games were on the road? East, West it doesn't matter, just got to find a way to get wins
Of the Top 8 East teams, 4 have a winning record against the West. Of the Top 8 West Teams, 8 have a winning record against the East and 7 of the 8 have a winning record against the West. There is a reason that the West has won a ton more games than the East this year. The West has 12 teams better than the 9th best East team. The East has 3 great teams. The 4-8 teams get to fatten up their records on 7 weak East teams while the West only has 3 weak teams.
It feels like the Rockets are just a .500 team this season. They'll play like a legit playoff team for stretches, but then lose winnable games and look rough for a few nights in a row. They've got one star player and mostly role players around him. And they're really banking on a second star coming out of a group of young players who are still fairly raw. But if you told me before the season they'd be .500 through 36 games, that they'd have a clear All-Star caliber player among the six prospects with real growth coming out of 2-3 of the other guys, and FVV and Brooks both playing like they earned their contracts, I'd be ecstatic. They're further ahead in the rebuild than I thought. But your expectations change so fast once the awful team you've been rooting for suddenly starts winning games. The same thing happened with the Texans this year and the Astros 8-9 years ago.
You didn't even list the worst loss, at home to Atlanta. I did not expect the Rockets to win any of the road games, except Chicago. That was also a bad loss.
