2nd tier sounds good to me. I also like that he says we're a strong candidate to make a trade. It will be a good year for Rockets basketball.
He did place us in "The Contenders" category. Just Group B instead of Group A. These Young "Prove It" teams sure can benefit from a rockin' home crowd. Bring it Houston. The crowd can win us a couple extra games if you show up every game! Sell your Texans tickets!
Everyone knows the Rockets need Dwight to buy in, so taking a wait and see approach is the safest choice, especially since the odds of Morey making another significant deal before the deadline is almost a certainty. But preseason predictions don't mean crap, just ask Texans' fans.
The only thing I would disagree with is the placement of the Bulls. They should be swapped with the Pacers who I think is the superior team. A healthy D-Rose aside, Chicago is missing its old bench mob who had notable names like Kyle Korver and Asik. They aren't legit championship contenders.
No one in the media is going to say the Rockets are legit because of how Dwight looked last year. Yes, he was hurt and hated playing with Kobe "i shoot all the time" Bryant. But the simple fact is the Rockets added the best defensive player of this generation to a squad that was the 2nd best offense in the league. And the Rockets did that with no preseason and they were the youngest team in the league. The Rockets should greatly improve their road record because they should be a top 5 defense. I really doubt the Rockets trade Asik this year. I think their best bet is that Asik cares about winning and the Rockets are able to move D-mo and Greg Smith. D-mo looks the part but he never hits his shots and TJ is just a better player. You have to expect CP, JL, JH and PB to be better players this year. And soon it will dawn on people during the season that...Oh yeah the Rockets have freaking Dwight Howard, Bogurt cant guard him, Gasol cant guard him, Bosh cant guard him, etc. And Oh yeah, the Rockets have Howard and Asik, we cant get an easy layup in the paint. This will be a fun season...i got my League pass set up and my popcorn ready.
I almost responded to the DA thread with a list that looked this one -- (1) firm contenders, (2) 'probably good, but we'll know when the games are played' teams, (3) firmly second tier teams, (4) and the rest. Who I put in which bucket was slightly different, but the approach the same. I think the Bulls and Rose in particular need to prove it first. And, I think he's a little too high on the Grizzlies. And somehow, he seems to have put less work into his section on the Rockets than on anyone else.
Totally agree, a team that took Miami to 7 games and now adds Scola and Granger has fewer question marks than a team completely built around Derek Rose's comeback.
The reason why the Bulls are ranked so high is their defense. Not only do they have perhaps the best defensive starting 5 in Rose, Butler, Deng and Noah, but they also have the hands-down best defensive coach. When Gibson comes in for Boozer it's just about impossible to score on them.
He talks about how OKC without harden or Martin will lack scoring in the beginning of 2nd and 4th quarters. Our bench is weak in that sense too. You'd think our bench is solid with bev and asik but we're not getting too much offense from those two. Garcia did well when he was playing with the starters, but he can't create on his own.
I think the 2013 Lakers have basically made the "experts" a lot more careful in regards to projecting teams that just added a star or two. Which in a way is stupid. It's not like any super teams BEFORE the Lakers actually failed. Teams that add stars improving is perhaps one of the safest bet possible. I may be bullish on the Rockets chances, but history have shown that this is a good bet. So while I don't fault Lowe or other people not wishing to repeat the Lakers debacle, which really is an outlier, I personally think the Rockets will do very well even from an objective standpoint.
[Grantland - Zach Lowe] Rockets Are Contenders He ranks the teams by category and within the categories there is no order. This is the first mainstream media article I've seen that approaches how us fans feel about the team this year. I thought it would be nice to share it here. http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/9790038/ranking-nba-tiers-power-2013-14-season
