To each its own. The Rockets will prove all the nay sayers wrong Again. You can book it now the Rockets will make the the playoffs.
If the Rockets get a few lucky breaks people will be shocked at how good they can be. If the followings things happen 50 wins is very possible: -McGrady comes back as a 20/5/5 guy (I would rather he gets moved but...) -Andersen is not a horrible defender and can give 10/6 in 24 minutes a night -Everyone else keeps playing at the level they did last season
I didn't know the season started today..... Everybody needs to chill and at least wait to training camp to really see where this team is going...
Considering that we lost all of our star players, barely making the playoffs is an acceptable and appropriate goal. Guess you are a glass empty kind of person.
There is a good chance Stern gives it to us. All we have to do is be the biggest market team in the bottom 5 and Stern would definitely hand it over to us.
And while I've read others saying this, if we can make the playoffs without any of our good all-stars, there's a good chance a disgruntled elite player like Bosh or D-Wade who is sick to death of playing for teams that don't surround him with good talent might want to go for it with a team like us.
This is a good point. If I'm killing myself for a talentless squad of hacks and I know my contract is about to expire it sure would be tempting to go to a team that could pay me top $$$ and already had a core of role players who scratched and clawed their way into the playoffs. I imagine Bosh and Wade watch guys like Battier, Scola and Hayes and wish they had those guys to go to war with every night.
I wouldnt set "making the playoffs" as our goal. Just get better and grow. We aren't going to make any big splashes in the playoffs anyways. People are pretty much guaranteeing playoffs already. ive seen it several times now. Sure fired way to get dissappointed. Simmer down the expectations. If we make the playoffs, great... if we don't not the end of the world. its all about maintaining expectations.
I was disappointed when i saw that we were #1 team expected to fall out, but honestly to an outsider we fit the bill. Yao out all year, Ron is gone, and Tmac is a big ? I'm just as aggrivated at this as everyone else but there are many things no one can calculate that would give us our edge. For instance, you cant count how many extra possesions scola's hustle gives us a year, or how frustrated a team gets when battier seems to be connected to a player at the hip. Houstonians know how inconsistent Ron was all season, but overall numbers of about 16/4/4 ish sound pretty good to everyone else. but we all know how many games we saw a 1-10 or 2-14 effort from him, it seemed like every other game. We cant have inconsistent players if we are going to have a chance this year. Ariza will bring intensity on both ends of the court. He will be a hard slasher again just like when he was in orlando. There were many times this year when artest seemed flat footed playing against a quicker scorer, but say good bye to that. We will have the quickest defensive line up 1 through 4 in the entire league, and im pretty sure hayes/andersen are no slouches themselves in quickness. Then theres always the TMac factor. I have always been a huge Mac fan b/c like him or not he played his heart out for this team in the playoffs when we had no other choice. We asked him to be a superstar and through injuries and lets face it, some bad teamates, he almost singlehandedly got us out of the first round when we were underdogs. It seems like he has been rehabing well so far, and if he can make it back around November/December and put up 16/5/5 we should be looking pretty good. The playmaking ability is what we will be missing the most. When he comes back and gets open shots for Brooks/Ariza/Battier/Buddinger, look out, Houston will be a problem out West!
Its real easy to say that the Rockets will be the number 1 team to fall this upcoming season because we are missing Yao and Tmac. I think the Rockets will do much better than what the so called "experts" are saying because our role players are use to playing without Yao and Tmac. If we do not make anymore trades the rest of the offseason and keep this roster for the start of training camp, we still will be better than over half the teams in the east and and some teams in the west. We could finish at .500 but I do not believe we will become the Kings and win only 20-30 games. I just would like to see how many games the Lakers, Spurs, Cavs, and the other top teams in the league would win if all their best players were always hurt and now missing the entire year. The Rockets have excellent role players that will not just give up because our star players are hurt. We saw that in the playoffs. I would love to see how the Lakers would compete if Kobe and Gasol were hurt all the time or for the entire season and Odom leaves. Based on their role players, they would be looking up to the Memphis and Sacramento by the end of the year.
Unfortunately,a lot of guys don't realize rebuilding is what we need. We need two high 1st round draft picks in 2010.We won't have the cap room to sign anyone either,with Yao's player option. Only 2nd tier "stars" will want to come to Houston unless we have a higher talent level,overachieving isn't going to be enough.
this is garbage.. the team is gonna fight and we are not gonna fall. we have talent that will step up.....
I pray that the guys on the team prove everyone wrong, and we do alot better than they expect us to do, and it's the end of July, training camp is still 2 months away, only 2 people are injured going into next season. We have more postives than negatives to think about. And imo, we may not have a superstar name on the floor, but every guy on our team plays with heart, and that says more to me than a superstar, all a superstar player is a diva, the expection imo is Yao, he seems to be a team player.
There's the remote possibility of Luis Scola, Trevor Ariza or Aaron Brooks becoming new home-grown superstars. If that happens, it'll be a different story.
Yep. A high to mid first round pick (within top 10) would do much more for this team's future than yet another first round flame-out. What people don't realize is that with the FA market being what it is next year, if the Rockets can acquire a solid contributor through this year's draft and have a high pick in next year's draft, our options grow exponentially in the form of sign and trades, and trading draft picks. Heck, worst comes to worst, we could even forgo signing a big name player, and sign a second tier player for less, and with the younger players having a year under their belts, go to battle with a young, hungry team.
We've always been underdogs and will be underdogs going in next season. that won't change. But I have a feeling we are going to prove a lot of people wrong and make playoffs (8th seed). Just you wait, nba.com, just you wait you bastards...
