This is my first post here this season on this bbs. It's a nice bbs by the way and it has all the stats and archies if one wants to take a look back at the history of the rockets and the 95' season was awesome. I love the colors and the design of the front page as well. OK, the one most important thing the Rockets need to focus on is to not look ahead. This is the one reason why the rockets are losing to these lottery teams constantly. If we had won HALF of those games against them, we would've been in a very decent playoff position at around 5th place. Besides holding off on the L.A. Lakers (very unlikely) and thinking about the Jazz & Suns, I think the rockets need to have this mentality: Don't lose a season series. This is certainly doable becaues outside of Dallas, we can still at least split the season series against all the other teams in the league. This team just has to establish a bit of consistency and certainly boost their road play a bit. Given how well we are doing against "playoff" teams in the west (2-1 vs. Kings, 2-1 suns, 2-1 Lakers, 2-2 wolves , 1-1 against SA (almost had that game the other day) and a blowout of 30 points in UTAH). Given the rockets play as of late (3 good games out of the last 4). So besides the fact that we should really intensify the level of play against the lottery teams, I think Rudy (as strange as a coach he is this year) should pull a Phil Jackson in 2000 and tell his team, "try not to lose a season series outside of Dallas". It'll be tough against SA and POR, but the fire that they ocasionally bring against the top teams, I think its doable. What would make this idea even more easier is that they take the "cupcake" teams "one game at a time". Still are some kinks in the armor for the team this year, but if they can get to the playoffs as a low seed in a losing effort, it will be a good accomplishment for experience for the rookie and the Franchise and a bigger step to next year. One thing I saw in the Laker game that we should improve on is while Yao Ming had a relative good game (Franchise stunk it up) against the Lakers that night, I thought that Rudy should've told Yao Ming on defense that whenever he saw Kobe driving to the basket on each attempt to move a bit out of the paint to intimidate him. He was bascially sitting in the paint too much allowing Kobe to penetrate to a pretty comfortable distance to the basket given him a good two points, or a foul. Let's hope the Rockets take my idea, but "one game at a time". It'll be an uphill battle no doubt.
I meant to say archives! I did register in December, but constantly the Clutch BBS stated that either I didn't have a sufficent long in name and I had to wait awhile for the e-mail to get the password.
