Dropping like Hot Cakes!!!!

I'm the first to admit, even after the Taylor injury, the Dream traded and everything else, I expected a lot more from the Rockets. I didn't see and still don't think the Taylor loss was that major, Dream to Toronto in the last few weeks have seemed to be a wash at least and Anderson for Rice is even also. Even with all that I expected the Rockets to be hovering around .500.

Once we made the trade for Griffin I had visions of 12pts 8rebs and 2.5 blks and the Rockets with a low post presence somehow. The addition of Rice I saw about 13pts, clutch open shooting and maybe some post ups even though I didn't like him or Anderson being here. I expected Morris or Langhi to provide energy behind Rice and finally give the Rockets something to look for as a 3 in the future. I saw Cat , Francis, Thomas ,Norris and Cato getting better together since they have been together for a couple of yrs now. I expected Rudy to use the the new rules to invite motion into his iso driven offense and various zones into his defense. In truth, I guess I was expecting to much from the Rockets.

Earlier in the season, I must admit that I was pretty harsh in criticizing the Rockets because I expected more from them. I have been watching this team since about 1980, and other than when they traded Moses after a MVP season had I ever experienced consecutive losing seasons as a Rockets fan. All during the Hakeem era, we had 1 non playoff yr and that was mainly due to Hakeem sitting out the last 2 weeks over a contract or hamstring dispute. Since Francis Rookie yr, we haven't made the playoffs, but he's not the blame really. I guess I overestimated growth,potential, and coaching on this team just like a lot of people on this board.

Now, with 30 + games reamining, I'm beginning to see what it feels like to be a Mavs fan for yrs or a Clipps fan . I'm to the point now to where little things make me watch this team instead of just sheer wins and losses. I'm not saying this team should tank or that the playoffs are impossible, but the likelyhood are worse, much worse than the Patriots winning the Superbowl. Barring a major injury to Utah(malone), Seattle(payton),Phoenix(Marbury),Clippers(Brand), or Portland(Wallace and Davis) this team will be in the lottery. With all that being said here is what I like to see the last 30+ games of the season.

Improvement: As simple as it may sound, for a team like Houston its very complicated. Its not just from the marginal players and Rookies, but also for the top players and coaches. Everyone on this team can improve based on the fact that we have such a bad record. Francis can iprove on asst vs to's, Mobley can play better mentally, Rudy can start to use the rules to his teams advantage and so on. This team can make excuses with injuries and everything else because most teams have them, but the good teams manage them better.

.500 Basketball: Again this is two fold as most people will point to the stat that we're .500 with Francis and horrible without. At some point this team will have to learn to win a couple of games when he doesn't play because of the migraines he suffers. Terrel Davis played the first half of the Broncos-Packers superbowl with a migraine and he still went on to win the sb mvp, so we can't learn to win or go close to .500 without Francis? This idea must change or improve.

Earlier in the season if you had told me by now I would only want these 2 items, I would think you're crazy, but looking at this team , myself included, the expectations for this team must come down. until we aquire the talent or the talent we have improves greatly, as sad as it may seem, we're not that good. Healthy or not, its only 1 or 2 players starting for this team that could start for half the teams in this league, Francis and Mobley. I had hpoed we would be about 4 or 5 games under .500, but when the team went limp with Francis out, I kinda knew we were not ready to run with the big dogs or even medium dogs. So as hard as it may be to accept or do, from now till the end of the season, most of my post will be about the two items above instead of about how bad we played and so forth.Even though they relate to each other, I will try to keep it to a minimum.