Rockets aren't very good at home, so I'd rather everyone be fresh and healthy if I had to choose one or the other.
The thing is, it's not home court advantage that provides the difference for teams to go through. The home court is simply a reflection of who is the better team, that's why the analysis shows the difficulty of lower seeds going through, as they are lower seeds simply because they are worse teams and over 7 game series it's really hard to pull off an upset having less talent. Look for OKC to provide lower seeded upsets this season.
Yes, typically if a team is a lower seed there is a reason that they are a lower seed and they usually aren't as god of a team. So course they would be expected to lose that series. Assuming OKC makes the playoffs this year (and I think they will) they won't be the first team ever to be a very good team that is only a lower seed because of injuries. Or how about if a team is very good because they made a major trade at the deadline, but they are a lower seed because they weren't as good before that trade? We have seen the #8 seed upset the #1 seed a couple of times. If OKC pulls off a first round upset, I wouldn't be surprised. And sure, maybe if we rested our players more and dropped to around the #6 seed, we might still be able to pull off a first round upset as well. But pulling off a first round victory shouldn't be our goal. Our goal should be to pursue a championship. And that is extremely difficult to do. We would need every advantage possible to try to accomplish it. There is a reason that only one team seeded #5-#8 has ever done it in NBA history. And while I imagine that at some point another team will accomplish that as well, I definitely wouldn't bet on it.
