Road Wins vs Home Losses is one of the simplest and best measures of current standings throughout the season. Rockets are 3-5. That's 10th in the West. That's about us -- for this year.
I'd say the Rockets are on pace for a fifth seed, considering their strength of schedule up to this point and the huge leap the team has played since they figured out how to play Lin and Harden. Right now the Rockets are tied for the sixth seed and most posters here are predicting they miss the playoffs? It is really hard to say what their ceiling might be in the playoffs, but if they continue their progression it wouldn't shock me to see them making it out of the first round.
Right now the Rockets are a middle of the pack team. Which I think is amazing and McHale and the entire coaching staff should be congratulated. The exciting part is that we have so many young guys still learning the game that we could possibly continue to improve for a long time. We have players like D-Mo and TJones that are still in the pipeline and have yet to break out. Of course it's also possible that we have already peaked and our young players won't get much better, but I think that's unlikely. We will know a lot more by the end of this season, but even after this season we still have a lot of growing up to do. I think it's important for fans to not get too excited or too down about what happens the rest of this season. Morey and McHale still have a lot of building and experimenting to do.
to be honest, this team is better then what their record indicates. We should have a couple more wins, but since this is a young and an inexperience team they tend to loose close games. But as they grow up and gain experience that won't happen. overall i'm very happy with the team.
we're decent. Not a bad team, but not good enough to make a lot of noise come post season (atleast not yet). Now if we can find a nucleus and steadily grow, we could be the similar to what the Thunder were/are.
Mid teens seed imo. Best thing we can do right now is to let our young starters get some invaluable playoff experience. This way, when Morey works his magic and we get another star player we have a team that has experience already.
Our record is not completely representative of the team. Early on we had a lot more chemistry issues due to the late acquisition of Harden. This is aside from McHale's personal issues and Lin's recovery from surgery. While the Home vs Road game gave us some advantage in terms of record, most of the early season was basically playing on the fly. I'd like to think they balance each other out somewhat. I honestly think our team is a moving target right now. Today, we're about as good as a 7th or 8th seed. I suspect we'll be playing better than that as a team (vs the actual win record) by the time the season is over. We definitely won't be a legitimate play off contender this year, however there is a smallish chance that we could get out of the first round depending on the team we match up against. The best match ups would be Memphis (big and slow), Spurs (skilled but old) and the Lakers (big and old). The worst ones would be OKC, the Clippers and the Warriors. These teams are in their primes, and well developed in terms of team identities and skill sets, and are capable of playing FAST transition basketball (our main advantage). Of these 3 I'd say our best bet is Golden State. OKC and the Clippers match up far too well. Ideally for us to get to the 2nd round, I think we'd need to either be in 7/8 and facing Memphis, or 5/6 and facing the Warriors. A LOT of stuff would have to go right for us to reach the 2nd round. As for next year, no idea how good they'll be... but a legit play off team should be in the cards whether we get an off season pick up or not.
It's a hell of a lot better than losing. Yep the Wizards beat the Heat. flukes happen and on any given day any team in the NBA can beat any other team. It happens. But just to show you how crazy your analogy is take a closer look at the Wizards. They have a total of 3 wins and only one of those wins was against a play-off caliber team (Portland and NOH are the other 2). Now look at the Rockets. The Rockets have 14 wins but more importantly is the caliber of opponents the Rockets have defeated. The Rockets do not have one fluke win against the Heat, they have many wins against play-off caliber teams. The Rockets have wins against the following teams: NYK 2 times Chicago Atlanta LAL Boston Memphis Thats 7 wins against teams that will be in the play-offs. Is that a fluke? One win might be a fluke, hell even two wins might be a fluke but when you have played 26 games and you have 14 victories and half of those victories were against play-off caliber teams I think it's fair to say that there is a little more substance there than the single fluke win Washington got over the Heat. And btw, ask all the teams that don't make the play-offs if wins mean anything or not.
Making playoffs would be wonderful this season for our growth and attractiveness to free agents . Playing okc in first round may not result in win but i will enjoy the experience
The lack of experience will certainly hurt in the long term but calling it here and now. This team will surprise you and exceed all expectations at the end of the season.
The "run and gun" type of offense will win the Rockets quite a few games in the regular season. But being able to outrun the opposing team still won't be enough to win consistently in the playoffs. Morey's definitely started to build a solid core, but as he's frequently mentioned, we still need the additional star player to pair up with Harden. And hopefully it's a frontcourt guy.
I feel we should be a couple more games ahead of .500. We should not have lost to Portland. Coaching was bad at the time in terms of substitution.
Dont forget the the Knicks who are old as well. Kidd , Camby, Thomas and Wallace are almost 40 I think the Rockets can outpace the older slower teams as shown by our easy wins over the Knicks.
May end up with the 14th pick again, but this year's team is definitely more fun to watch then the last couple of years.
You are only as good as your road record shows. So far the Rockets are not very good. Also the Rockets record against West teams is so far quite bad. Unfortunately they are in the West and need to play the majority of games against West teams.
Same story different year. We overachieve early on and then we will squander out of the playoff picture for various reasons.. Injuries, lack of experience, bad coaching decisions, not enough depth what have you. We will end up on the outside looking in AGAIN. We will hear these dreaded words again " With the 14th pick in the 2013 NBA draft ... The Houston Rockets select ...." I'm excited about this team as much as the next fan but I'm not gonna get too excited in December. Enjoy it for what is but realize that we are overachieving. No if and or buts about it.
