rockets fan or not.........cavs and lakers on a full speed collision course in the finals.........a speeding train heading down the track with no brakes and nobody will stop that.......those are 2 teams playing at another level that not even one team is playing at...... nobodies beating cleveland in the east......and LA just has to fix there defensive mental lapse when they get up big and they will be fine...... it will be a great series between the rocks and lakers because we do match up very well....it will go 6 or 7 games all close.....and we will scare the bejesus out of them.....but we wont beat the lakers in a 7 game series call that not being a fan or whatever u want to call it....I call a spade a spade.........I gotta be real with myself before i can be real with anybody else....with all that being said the only team out west with a punchers chance is h-town so all the lakers board talk about sweep exit is ludicrous.....we are gonna come to play and play well
i would rather have houston play the fakers instead of the j*zz.. i think we matchup better with them considering their rotation. anyways, we gotta take tonight's game.
Of course they want us. Why wouldn't they? We owned the Blazers the past two years and I wanted Houston to face them. It usually translates. It's the Rockets job to prove otherwise, but of course LA wants to see us in the next round.
Man, f the Lakers. F Kobe and his wife and their feces touching housekeeping policies! BRING IT ON!!!
Why would the lakers want to play a team with the only guy who could shut down kobe bryant for a full 48 minutes or they can play us
pretty good and beating the lakers in a seven game series is 2 different things.......I am not saying there is no good teams in the west Houston is pretty good, portland is pretty good, dallas and denver as well.......but do I see a clear cut team that is gonna unseat the lakers...honestly not being a homer??.....NO I believe houston stands a better punchers chance than denver because we match up better.....lakers front line is to big and talented for denver hands down....N.O. has no skllled bigs besides West, thats why denver is winning that series......LA's 7 ft frontline will tap dance on denvers with relative ease.....just to big and talented.....gasol, bynum, and odom will have a field day on denver
Lakers board wants Houston? F**k them. None of the posters on that message board could take the Rockets in a seven game series.
except for the fact that the blazers are a jumpshooting team and the lakers actually have low post presence along with good shooters but other than that youre spot on
Rockets still have their hands full with Portland. They barely won 2 at home. Some here predicted that they "would blow them (Portland) away" in game 3. Comments by fans mean very little. The problem is anything CAN happen in a series until it's over (witness Deke going out on such a fluke of an injury). So yes, the Rockets CAN beat the Lakers, depending on WHAT happens. But the Rockets have some weak experience links in Brooks, Lowry and Wafer. And they aren't as athletic overall. Artest IS "an" X factor. He can shoot you into the game or out. If he goes 9 of 20 instead of 5 of 20, game 4 isn't such a nail-biter. (Even experience doesn't guarantee you'll have a good game.) I'm not a betting man. But even if I was, I wouldn't go out and put my life-savings on the Rockets beating LA in a 7-game series. Maybe some here would like to do that -- if they're really that confident.
Look it easy to win the series in a straight sweep. Rick needs to pull Ron to the side right before the first game a tell him to go straight for Kobe's knee. Then with Kobe and Ron out we could win. . Other then that I'm just glad we got out of the first round.
Theirs is one of the worst in the entire league, they have no room to talk. There crowd is full of primadonnas who think they are too good to really root for the team, the first sign of defeat they literally give up. Our crowd will rock if the Lakers play us.
some of you guys are delusional. i'm not saying houston has no chance against the lakers, but it's gonna be hard for houston to beat the lakers. with a healthy tmac, yes its more likely. teamwork and heart can only take you so far. the lakers have simply way too much talent/firepower. it won't be a sweep though because the lakers have mental lapses and play down to their competition at times and we can definitely steal some. but winning the series requires 4 games where we pretty play a flawless game while they mess up a bit (kobe going 5-20 while artest going 10-20 for instance). i just don't see that happening for us 4 times in a series. either that or yao absolutely dominating like old lakers "MDE" shaq which i don't see either (and i love yao ming, and he is the best center at the moment but he isn't at the MDE level). if yao can all of a sudden flip a switch utterly dominate and repetitively dunk the ball on their throats (none of that i'm fronted so i'll defer to my teammates stuff), or artest outplays/outshoots kobe, i don't see the rockets dispatching the lakers. it will be a 6 game series imo.
I think it has less to do with matchups and more to do with defense. The Rockets don't match up particularly well with the Lakers bigs, though neither does Denver. But the real issue is, Portland aside, who the Rockets do match up well against, the Rockets are better scoring margin team than the Nuggets. At 98.4 ppg during the regular season, they score enough, and at 94.4 ppg given up they defend much better. Beating the Lakers is about holding their offense in check. As good as they can be defensively, they've been so good offensively they haven't had to rely on an amazing defensive effort, which is why Utah was able to come back from big deficits in their series...still, LA was just too good offensively for it to matter. Keeping LA in check offensively comes down to two things, imo: 1. Making either Odom or Gasol or both have bad games. Odom in particular seems to be a real indicator for their success. Unfortunately the dude is seriously on fire, and nothing about Scola or Landry's physical attributes or defensive capabilities indicate they should be able to stop him. Containing Odom seems to be about frustrating him - getting in his head, making him uncomfortable in some way or another, etc. 2. Not letting too many of their role players go off. You can't afford games with Derek Fisher shooting 50% on threes (as he did in Game 2 against the Jazz), or Trevor Ariza pouring in 20+ (as he did in Game 1, not to mention shooting 8-11 on threes in the first three games against Utah)...or Josh Powell doing damage (he barely played against Utah but hit for 17 points and 9 boards against us earlier in the season). The good news is that the Rockets seem to be successful at this strategy in Round 1 - if Roy or Aldridge beats us, fine, but we can't have Roy, Aldridge, Fernandez and Outlaw all having good games. The bad news is that the Lakers role players seem more poised and disciplined and are obviously beneficiaries of more and better open looks. Kobe can and will dominate as he typically does. Try and make it hard for him and hope for the best there... Obviously offensive efficiency will continue to be important for the Rockets, but the team isn't capable, even when running at 100% perfection offensively, to beat a Lakers team also operating their offense perfectly...so defense will be key.
