By the way, it’s not only that we’re good. Our youngest prospect is 23. We have a ton of draft assets through 2030. If we don’t make an ill advised trade, we’re going to be good for a long time.
Hard schedule first 20 games (poor record) + Easy schedule ____________________ = Tank for Wemby Easy schedule first 20 games (good record) + Tougher schedule ______________________ = ?? ( tank for Denim/Flagg/Ace ) or (Go for championship)
Yeah, our schedule has been soft. Our best wins are Dallas (8-7), Knicks (9-6), Memphis (9-7) and LAC (9-7). The rest of the opponents we beat have losing records. We need to beat some of the better teams before we declare that we are good again. We're certainly better than we were a couple of years ago but that's a pretty low bar.
…but that in itself is a milestone because beating the teams you are supposed to beat is part of what good teams do. They don’t drop a lot of winnable games. But otherwise I agree with you - we aren’t “top 4 in the West” good, but we have achieved a milestone for a young emerging team.
Yes, but you have to bring it at least 2-3 years in a row, now the Rockets are a One Hit wonder but they can be a lot more, give them more years. The Continuity seemed to work just fine without jumping the gun on either too positive and too negative side. Ime seems to be 100% the right coach for this emerging team and that itself is a miracle.
I guess it depends on your definition of "good". If you mean "we don't suck" , then yeah. If you mean "one of the better teams in the league", then that's tbd.
And the fact that the strengths of a lot of the guys we drafted are in line with Udoka's philosophy. That alignment is what is making us better than expected - Udoka is an aggressive and physical defensive coach who was gifted several players who fit that style perfectly. A more disciplined defensive coach might have told Tari to stick to the scheme and stop ad libbing to double guys unexpectedly but Udoka has been encouraging the chaos even if it means we give up some easy buckets from time to time because on balance we are so disruptive to what teams are trying to do offensively that teams have a hard time getting an offensive rhythm against us. ....honestly what can really propel this team forward now is for Stone to find an answer for our poor shooting - namely, we gotta find a better shooting version of Jalen Green who can also be a facilitator and doesn't give away too much defensively. Devin Booker would turn us into a real contender very quickly if only KD and Beal can force Phoenix into an early rebuild.
Yeah, I still file us under "young emerging team" - we are still a play in team in the West. The only question is what seed as a playin team.
It's kind of early. If you look at most (?) of the teams we've played, they suck or sucked when we played them. There are others that were missing key players. The GSW loss was a good "almost win". We got destroyed by OKC. We lost to a couple of teams we shouldn't have. We have a couple of games against OKC (even without Chet) and GSW coming up, and if you want to throw them in there, the TWolves. I'm going to be looking to see how we play against them as some type of barometer. It's difficult to judge them against DET, SAS, WAS, etc. Teams like NY and DAL are still trying to figure it out, but were decent wins. One thing the Rockets have going for them is the fact they've been healthy so far this season. Most of the other teams in the NBA look like they started the season in a warzone. Still, you can't fault the Rockets except for maybe their play in 2 or 3 of the games they should've won. They're taking care of what's put in front of them for the most part. I think they're on track to improve from last year if they can avoid the injury bug.
I'd agree with that, but I don't classify play-in teams as good teams. It's subjective but they need to have success against the better teams before I'll classify us as "good".
I don’t think the schedule has been that soft. We’ve played the warriors, bucks, pacers, thunder, knicks, mavs, grizzlies and the clippers are now (9-7). Sure some of those teams are struggling for now but the bucks and pacers were playoff teams. Only the Celtics and Cavs are better than the knicks, and in the West only the Lakers we haven’t played.
Yeah, maybe that's the difference. When I look at the teams we've played, I basically care about how they're playing now and who played (i.e. were their better players injured) to make some type of decision about what kind of win it was. I don't really care about last year in that sense. As for the only teams better than the Knicks, have you looked at the records in the East? There are only 4 teams with winning records in the entire conference. lol. This is one of the worst starts to a season the East has had in the past 50 or so years. Warriors : legit good Bucks : They're 6-9 and were not a good team when we played them, and had just gotten Dame back I think the game we played them, and no Middleton. Their 6 wins are against Philly, Toronto, Detroit, Houston, Utah, and Chicago. Pacers : They're 6-9, are probably better than they're playing, but that's how they're playing now. Knicks : While not the team they were last year, I'll give you that they can be classified as good. They're 9-6. Memphis : Also a good team, but when we played them, they were missing JJJ. Mavs : Not sure yet about this one, but the Mavs have won their last 3 games to become 8-7. Maybe they've turned it around. Clippers : always the pretender. Missing Kawhi (so what else is new?). They've basically lost to good teams and beaten bad teams this year - so maybe we really are good. lol.
That’s a fair assessment. Which teams are considered good then? Other than the Celtics Cavs (injury ridden) and the Lakers. Only 5 teams in the league have a better record than us and isn’t crushed by injuries.
