It's not bad it's not great. The last stretch tells me that we're capable of beating the good teams on a good night at home. It also tells me that we struggle to beat the good teams on the road. Our team is good, but it's not great. Some flaws are still there. What remains to be seen is to understand if those flaws are personnel related or experience related.
3-3 may sound good for some but with the way they were playing the first three games they should've gone at least maybe 4-2 or even 5-1. They choked away the lead in Miami and couldn't make plays down the stretch, leave alone the fact that the whistles gave them 2 more points in a 9 point loss. The OKC game WE should've been movtivated to win, especially on their home floor. The Bulls game just shows how much we struggle with the slow pace of a defensive physical team. We went 0-3 on a playoff road trip where we should've at least gotten one game seeing how we were playing before anyway.
EXACTLY we are in really good shape portland then spurs looks like a pretty easy route to the WCF to me. Hope for warriors not to catch up to Portland to take the number 5 seed.
Rockets staying at the 4 seed versus Portland and then with San Antonio as the #1 seed...that is about as GOOD a matchup situation as the Rockets could hope for. That leaves OKC/LAC on the other side of the bracket. Hopefully things stay as is.
So people on here just assume we will beat SA? That is laughable. Yes we match up the best with them out of the other elite teams in the west, but in no way do i think we will beat SA in a series. It just feels like wishful thinking.
Not surprised by the super knee jerk responses by some of the posters here. The Rockets are clicking now as a team and playing good basketball. We lost against OKC because Dwight had a bad game but keep in mind their team has been together for more than 2-3 years (their core anyways). Against Chicago, they are ultimately a more defensively disciplined team. Coach Thib > Coach McHale (defensively at least) Lastly the Heat, you guys really expect us to blow them out again? There's a reason why they've been in the finals the last 3 years.. We have a shot at doing some damage this playoffs but please keep your expectations in check, its probably not realistic to EXPECT this team to win it all this year. It's possible but we need to be firing on all cylinders for that to happen.
Bosh played quite possibly the worst game of his career against Houston and Miami still only lost by 3 on the road.
I hope we stick with the 4th seed and snag POR at 5th. SAS stays #1 and we shimmy our way to the WCF. If we got to 3rd, as of now, we'd be playing GSW, which while beatable...meh I'd rather take on POR tbh. Then 2nd round we'd face OKC. No thanks. SAS any day over OKC for us. I'd rather meet OKC in the WCF after they grit out a tough series against the Clippers.
Yes. Spurs are great. Have a great coach, great players and a great system. But they are far from unbeatable, even in the post-season. Let's look at their last 5 yrs. Last yr was one of their best yrs in a LONG time. They're now yet another yr older, and no one thinks we should SLEEP on them, but last yr was more out of the ordinary relative to the other games in this half decade. Prior yr they got buried by OKC after starting 2-0. That's right, they lost 4 in a row. That also would sound "uncharacteristic" of SAS, but it happened, and OKC's style is similar to ours (esp. since we have Harden too now haha). Sure they beat the Clippers that yr before OKC in a clean sweep, but that was when CP3 just joined the team and DJordan still sucked and BG was no where near as good as he is this yr. Not the LAC we see today. Yr before that? Out in the FIRST ROUND against MEM. Yr before THAT one? 4-0 out in the second round against PHX. And then before THAT? Out in the FIRST ROUND yet again vs. DAL.
And we've done what over that same 5 year period? We've put in work against them this season but don't count the Spurs out until they're out.
I agree. But they aren't unbeatable. The Spurs were tied 2-2 with the Warriors last year in the playoffs. This year, the Rockets are better than last year's Warriors. AND they match up well with the Spurs. AND I don't think the Spurs are better this year than they were last year. The Rockets certainly would be very competitive against the Spurs, and could very possibly beat them in a series.
I definitely don't think they are unbeatable and would rather face them over LA/OKC. But people seem to post like we would be the favorites in their mind which i don't think should be the case. The Spurs are proven in the post season. I would give us a 30-40% chance against them in the post season as opposed to a 10-20% against LA/OKC
Um, how long have the Spurs core been together? How long has ours? Odd comparison, but like I said, we shouldn't SLEEP on the Spurs, but if you had to choose a realistic second round team to match up against in the WC, you WOULDN'T choose the Spurs? Or better yet, do you think our chances against them in the playoffs is better or worse than 50%? And if worse, why do you think that? I think our odds are better than 50% for sure.
I disagree. Proven and having done something in the past are different things. You can take SOME intangibles out of past experiences, but in any given moment, you have to look at current context. What I see is a team that is getting older, has less time playing together as a full team because someone is always hurt for one reason or another (and might be again in the post-season), has a team that does not matchup well with the Rockets style of play, has lost to us 3 times in the regular season AND has, out of the elite teams of the nba this season, the worst record against other elite teams (this was at least true a month ago, I haven't checked since then, but will check for this post their W/L record against 'elite' teams). Their record has mostly been on capitalizing on weaker teams, where their system can beat them out...but against MIA, OKC, LAC, HOU, Pacers, and POR, the Spurs have been pretty bad. Quick look at SAS as of now vs. those aforementioned teams...they are now: W/L of 5-11. Ouch. 5 wins out of 16 against MIA (twice, one a win), OKC (all 3 losses), Pacers (1 loss), HOU (all 3 losses), POR (2 wins, 2 losses) and LAC (2 wins, 1 loss -- one win coming when CP3 was injured and out). Sure seems like they've lost a step against the elite...
I think the mindset also plays a very important role. The team KNOWS they are capable of beating the Spurs and are not really afraid to play them. Vs OKC and the Clippers it seems we have a mental barrier preventing us from playing normally (think about our nightmare second half vs OKC and the home against the clippers were we were better till late in the third quarter).
When good teams play each other it's always 50-50. We played tough with some luck and won the first 3. The expectation for the last 3 was unreasonable due to us winning the first 3. It would have been nice had we won 1 more but chit happens. Also it would have been nice had we lost the first 3 and then win the last 3. Even with the same 3-3 record you only feel as good as the last game.
