I rarely post in the GARM and its even more rare for me to throw up a new thread. I do not get the luxury of watching games night in and night out. I do not get the opportunity to watch the styles of each player. I am left to analysis the box scores and the trends. In light of the common disappointment of tonight's loss, I would like to point out the positives. Many of the posts have a common thought; We must seed as high as possible for HC advantage; Avoid/Aim for certain teams. What we lack to see is what we HAVE accomplished over the last two months. As each game slips by, and the end draws closer, we soon forget the the brutal stretch of games we have gone through. Judging by past performance, I would not have been surprised if we slipped below 4th seed. What I did not expect was the final night deciding seeds 2-5. Few would have expected the Jazz to be seated at #8. I believe the Rockets did a tremendous job these last two months in remaining competitive. We seen some great rallies from teams with lower ranks. I will say this now; Any of these seven teams can end up in the WCF. We have overcome one of our most serious problems... consistency. It would burn me to see the continuous 4th quarter collapses. I was tired of loosing to the bottom teams. When we lost, we were losing the entire game. 4th quarter collapses still reared its ugly head, but we contained it. outside a couple of exceptions, we closed out games that we should have won. This is one of the few seasons that we have made it into the playoffs because we were good, and not just because we were better than the lottery teams. We are an actual contender in the playoffs, not like 3/4 of the Eastern Conference cannon fodder in the playoffs. Tonight's loss wasn't a very disappointing loss. There are several games that we could have easily lost over the last couple of months that could have put us in a much worse place. There are also many games we could have put away earlier in the season that would have easily put us at #2. All in all, the Rockets have done terrific. It would be great to see what this team can do with its full salary on the floor.
Thanks for the positive and realistic spin, Space Ghost! It's good to see you post, and that you haven't jumped ship! It really speaks to the quality of this year's playoff bracket when you notice that all but one have 50+ wins... The Rockets are no slouch this season. Houston has a great shot... it has been a great run in the regular season. The last game of the season loss was definitely hard to take... but it was not the end of the world. Had it been the end of a 10 game skid, I would be really worried. The worst case scenario that we all get to watch is actually a very good match-up for Houston. So let the games begin!
You have made some good points, but the bottom line is that we can't handle pressure against teams which consistently cause mismatch problems and the result of that was the inevitable 4th quarter collapse. Basketball requires a team to make adjustments as best as possible,we weren't able to do it tonight. This is not an isolated example either. We have run out of time,now it's up to the players, Coach Adelman and the rest of the staff to do the best that they can. Otherwise we will be going fishing.
True, there's obviously some issues, but you have to admit that a $20 million player could solve all , or most of that for us (i dont mean tmac necessarily, but he sure would have helped).
A physically, mentally healthy and motivated McGrady would have made a difference for sure. I'm not implying we could go all the way with him at or near his best, but that would have been a factor in our favor.
I don't know why people are whining, like IROC it said it is a good match up for the Rockets and what these bandwagon losers don't get is that Portland has not been in the playoffs 90% of its roster are first timers to the playoffs so it would work to our advantage, also people in the playoffs the records are 0-0 regular season games don't count anymore so instead of whining like a biatch support the team and get red
NO would have been a better opponent, a weak bench and not playing at the top of their game right now along with staying out of the Laker bracket the next round. Yesterday was a bitter loss not only because we lost the obvious things like a better seeding, HCA, momentum and confidence going into the playoff but also because we can't solve the problem of fronting Yao and those collapses in the 4th qtr. Sorry, people have a lot to whine about.
I think the problem on the board is that most people where really sure we would get the SW Title. And most people where really hoping that we could get an "easy" playoffs schedual by avoiding the Lakers until the WCF. Well, thats not going to happen if we pass the first round. However, on the bright side, the Blazers are our best matchup. We matchup better against them than against NOH or Denver. The have an unexperienced Rookie at the SF in Batum who is going to get ran over by Artest. And, the have no one for Yao Ming. Baby steps everyone. Lets be glad that after all we have went through we are even in the playoffs!! Mac down, Rafer traded! I mean, Daryl Morey pretty much said that after the Rafer trade he wasn't even sure we would make the playoffs!! So lets get in these series with anger and commitement and lets do our best to go the fartest!! GO ROCKETS!!!!!!!!!!!!
i would like to have your share of optimism. but i still feel the rockets underachieved. even without tmac, we should have won home court and the division title. especially with a hobbled duncan and injured ginobili for the latter part of the season. we have artest and he was supposed to offset any offense we lose if yao or tmac got injured (in turns out it was a great trade by morey because yes, tmac got injured). so far it has been an average run as we had practically the same seeding/records with years past even with an extremely better team. especially with the rest of the western conference teams not as strong as they were in the previous years.
Great post. We have beaten a lot of good teams this year(except for the lakers we have a tied or winning record against anyone thats good) and if it wasn't for t-mac playing we probably would of knocked off those bottom teams we lost to...which probably is what cost us more than the last game of the season. I am guessing the people whining only wanted one thing.. to make it past the first round, for me if you don't win at all it doesn't really matter when you went out... because you didn't win. So why does it matter if we meet the Lakers in the 2nd round if we advance, chances are we would of had to meet them at some stage to win the West.
What I don't get is how we as fans can't look at the match-up realistically. Sure we lost last night but people act like we lost a series last night. The Playoffs are about teams playing and making adjustments and finding out how to beat a team. After we spanked Portland a couple weeks ago people were begging for this match-up and Portland Fans were dreading it! Now we're terrified of big bad Greg Oden and Pryz? I wish Clutch could cut off Access to board right after loses because of knee-jerk stuff like this.
