Injury is a part of the game. You take the top 2 player off any team for extended period fo time, they'll be a lottery team. Just imagine Mavs w/o Dirk, and Terry, imagine Spurs w/o Duncan and Parker, or even better, imagine Heat w/o Wade and Shaq. Rockets were bad last year for the most part due to injury, and so would any other team. As long as they stay healthy, by the end of the season, they'll be as good as anyone.
Holy crap then they draft Greg Oden! It's Twin Towers all over again! I think we're good for the ring, i'm not thinking about injury, if we can get Bonzi coming off the bench, posting up and playing to his strengths, we'll be a force. I'm really liking our team this time around.
Good, an obvious fix was needed 2 years ago (because a 6 seed could have home court but a 5 seed never could-as happened last year in LAC-Den). Found the exact wording below. Playoff Seeding: The first four seeds in each conference will continue to be given to the three division winners and the team with the next best regular season record, but these four teams will now be seeded in order of their regular season records. Among other things, this change will ensure that the two teams with the best records in the conference will not meet earlier than the Conference Finals. So actually a 5 seed may not be too bad. You get to play the weakest division winner in the 1st round, very likely with home court. Even if the Rockets can only get 3rd in the division, they could be in a plausible spot (5th seed, drawing an easy 1st round opponent starting in Hou) to take the WC.
Battier covers Diaw Tracy covers Marion VSpan pesters Nash as much as humanly possible (remember Nash is nearly 33, VSpan is only 24) Snyder covers Bell Yao covers Amare/Thomas Spoiler Novak covers Piatkowski
There's not a team in the Western conference that the Rocks should be worried about because they have something during the playoffs that no other team has and that's a 7'6" freak called Yao. During the playoffs...everyone knows that games become half court and all the runni' and gunnin' from the reg season goes out the window. Remember the Dallas series when Yao could find his shot anytime he wanted it and Dallas had no answer...Dirk was out of sorts so we take the 2-0 lead in Dallas. With this group of athletes surround Yao...we can handle the Mavs, Spurs and Suns in a 7-game series...it all boils down to Defense and smart basketball that JVG preaches. The injury bug bit us (last year) enough for the next two years...I'm pumped and can't wait to Rock the house on that first home game against the Mavs...
