i admit, i can't help but look toward that series. my confidence is around 70% for the utah series but if we did end up playing the mavs, i would probably tear all my hair out by the time it came to a conclusion. beating them would be the greatest thing ever, but losing would be bitter, bitter, bitter, bitter. i hate the mavericks so much. but alas, time to focus on the jazz.
not used to optimisum around are ya??? man it sure would be sweet to beat to the jazz,mavs, then spurs. and in the finals beat shaq/wade, or lebron, or the pistons not sure which one i would get more joy out of winning the lotto, or all of the above happening
We have a weapon that neither the Jazz nor the Mavs have. His name is RAFER ALSTON! Our ability to bring the ball up court is unparralled in this league.
I concur. Sloan is too good a coach to dismiss so easily and the Jazz, like the Rockets, have been away from the playoffs for a while so I look for them to be just as hungry and eager as the home team. This looks to be a tough series as both teams are somewhat evenly matched. As for all of this Mavs talk, all I can say is to be very careful what you ask for.
Let's focus on the Jazz man. One game at a time, I don't even want to think about game 2 and you guys are talking about the second round?? Whether we like it or not there is a small mental bump that T-Mac and Yao have to get over because they haven't gone to the second round yet. Once we safely get over that, and depending on how well we do that, we can start talking about expectations. Because whoever we play in the 2nd round can't really be considered better or worse than who we would play in the WCF. As we all know, both of those teams would most likely be better than whoever's in the NBA Finals. Basically, let's focus on playing the Jazz. Hopefully when we have that out of the way, we'll have the confidence to play with the bigger boys. The first round will determine if we're any good, and the second round would determine if we are capable of going all the way. At least that's how I see it.
Clutch, I usually trust your words. But you throwed the white flag too early on the HCA. So you sort of lost some credibility with me a bit on this one
Two weeks ago, with McGrady and Yao, we lost to the Jazz in our building. And it will happen again, if we let ourselves get distracted.
First off, I didn't know that anything I wrote in this thread required "trust". Secondly, I hate to break this to you dfwrox -- but T-Mac and Yao were not injured and homecourt advantage was not the Rockets #1 priority at that time. <I>They</I> were throwing in the towel, not I. It wasn't until the Jazz lost their third in a row (all against non-playoff teams) that the Rockets got back in the game. Don't tell me the Rockets were playing for homecourt when they're resting their stars for a home game needing to make up 3 with 6 remaining to catch the Jazz. I'd make the same post over and over again -- if you're settling for the 5th seed without homecourt, don't give us 40-minute a night specials from Rafer and Juwan. Give the young guys their time and get a better draft pick.
So true. I appreciate the optimism coming from this forum (for a change), but come on. I was pretty confident 2 years ago when we went up 2-0 against the mavpricks. I think this series will be MUCH tougher than most people here are predicting. Even if we go up 3-0 with 3 blowouts, I won't rest easy until we get that 4th win.
