Ha. How so. Wouldn't say scared but they are not a good match up for us and saying otherwise shows you really don't follow us closely. The mavs have our number. Even this season when we split the series, that last game was too close for comfort. In a playoff series, I like our chances against a team like the spurs cuz we would have the best player in the series with Harden. There are very few players I would take in a playoff series over dirk, and with the right people around him they can easily pull off a first round upset
The Mavs are not some historic "unbeatable" franchise that the Rockets have had to be concerned about... nowhere close to what the Spurs are now, or what the Jazz/Sonics/Suns used to be. This is the same franchise that used to give away tickets for free in the mid-90's.... I wouldn't be intimidated by the Cuban era at this point. If your only reason for not wanting to face the Mavs is Dirk, you're going to have to grow a pair and realize that he's lost more playoff series than he's won in his lifetime... and this is by far the weakest Mavs playoff team he's ever had. Also, if the Rockets are in apposition to play the Spurs in the first round, something drastic (either way) would have had to occur. The last two games were without Harden, and the Rockets split those. The two games before that had the Rockets getting huge leads, only for the Mavs to make a come back and cut it close... they split those. All-in-all, at full strength, the Rockets have shown signs of dominating this team... while the only reason the Mavs have made it close is the Rockets inability to hold leads, along with their injuries (and not once have the Mavs looked "dominant" with both teams at full strength). Dirk is going to get his, and the Rockets will have to survive with a combination of Parsons/Jones/D-Mo/Smith (if healthy) to try and slow him down. The biggest advantage for the Rockets is not only Harden but Howard... the Mavs don't have anybody who can stop him, nor do they have a strong interior defense as is. In fact, the key for the series would be how the Rockets handle Ellis... if they can contain him (as Lin/Beverly did in the last game Harden was out), they could survive Dirk going off. Pretty sure if you poll Mavs fans, they'd rather face the Blazers or even Spurs than the Rockets... and trust me, I've followed this team plenty long/close enough to know that the Rockets would be fine in this matchup (I'd bet my decade + of posting here on it).
I think if SAS/Portland finish 4/5th which I think will be the case. They will be a hell of a matchup for OKC in round 2. Hoping Memphis grabs that 8th spot. That would be a tough series for OKC out of the gate. They match up very well.
The Rockets' record is 36-17, which means they won 67.9% of their games, not 63.2%. So it's exactly as jtr said, if the Rockets keep up this pace, they'll 20-9 is a record that can be expected.
We need to seize the division and stay at top till end of regular season. Then we will be #2 or 3 seed. To seize the Southwest Division, we need to win all the three remaining games against the SAS and NOR, but still need the SAS to lose enough games in their remaining 5 (HOU X1, DAL X2, MEM X1, NOR X1) to close the gap of two games now between us and them. Any way, we have no control if we can stay at the #2 or even #3 seed even if we win all games we should win. We have a great chance to get to the WC final if we can keep the 7-game winning momentum but there is no margin for error down the road. I hope Morey won't rock the boat too much if he was to do any trade before the deadline. I would rather spend the time to convince Asik it'd be best for his career if he'd put in his 100% even coming off the bench for the rest of the season.
The Rockets start off the post allstar break with 4 winnable games. In the mean time the teams ahead of us are all playing each other. Its not farfetched to say that the Rockets could be the 2 seed a week from now.
The Mavs would be an ideal matchup. This team has gelled, and the Mavs are not deep enough to beat the Rockets in 7. People that are afraid of these matchups must not have high expectations for this season.
I am with you. Just hope we can get and continue to stay there till it really counts. BTW, do you realistically think SAS will lose their next four or five games for us to take the conference lead next week? At LAC and POR maybe, but not likely at home against DET and CHA. I would say at PHX is 50-50. They are not going to play any team in the Southwest division in February after the ASB.
Rockets already have the head to head, so conference means nothing unless a 3 way tie comes up at the end of the regular season. Rockets are two back of the spurs. Win the next two, and the Spurs lose two games they have no business winning and then basically the Rockets will have a 1 game lead(because we own the tie breaker). At that point, the Rockets control there own destiny in seeding in regards to 2-8th spot.
I'm guessing folks are still traumatized by that first round Dallas series when we had Tmac and Yao. Probably one of the worst officiated in history. As a matter of fact, didn't Tim confess that it was rigged? Anyways, I'm confident our team will smash Dallas because they don't have enough firepower to compete with us unless Cuban pays off those zebras again. Rockets can simply run them out of the building because they are just to damn old.
It's my wish too. We won't be #2 by the end of season with 56 wins if we keep our current pace of winning. In that case we need to be a division leader to be in the top three seeds. The remaining three games we have left in the division happen to be the last three games of the regular season for us. Our last game vs SAS is our second to the last on 4/14. So we won't know until SAS fall to 9-5 in the division (We are 9-4 now) before 4/12 for this route. The other way for us to get to the #2 seed through conference win % is as you said by us winning the next two games on 2/19 and 2/20, and SAS losing their next two on 2/18 and 2/19, then they will likely win their next five. Currently SAS is a .717 team and we are .679. So we may have two days fortune until we meet LAC on 2/26 and MIA on 3/4. And let's pray LAC and POR won't get better in their win% in the remainder of the season. My point is, we can only do what we can and should. But there are still a lot of factors outside of our control. This link below may offer a little more info regarding our odds. http://www.playoffstatus.com/nba/westernwinmagicnumbers.html
SAS have the depth and experience to stop losing to bad squads, even when they are the second oldest playoffs team in the WC. Actually the only non-playoff teams they have lost to so far this season are the NYK and DET. They may have the worst record against the top six contending teams (1-11) in the conference up to now. They do have the best record outside of that. We are however the youngest playoff team in the WC for two years in a row and are only getting better. I hope the current roster continue to develop like the Thunder and the Pacers to become a solid championship contending team by next season. Both of them haven't tried to buy a third superstar from outside to get to this level, probably because they know it's only one but not the only way to become a championship team. They do have better head coach though.
