51-31 Kevin Martin will have a better year Deep at every position Will be fine w/o Yao on the b2b played with out him all last season we will be fine
Why 56 wins? Only Miami can sweep the Rockets this season and they only play each other twice. The Rockets can split with the Lakers. Houston has no problem beating the best teams in the league such as Boston, LA, Orlando, and Dallas. I believe the 42 win Rockets last season went: 1-3 against the Lakers (lost 1 in OT) 1-1 against Boston 0-2 against Orlando (before that the Rockets had no problems against the Magic with Yao) 3-1 against the Mavs
A quote from Warren Buffett ... "Forecasts may tell you a great deal about the forecaster, they tell you nothing about the future"
I think if Yao stays healthy for the majority of the season, then we can go 54-28. IF you look at the 08-09 season, we went 53-27. I'd say this year we have an arguably better team so even a 55 or 56 win season wouldn't be out of the question.
I think in the beginning, we'll play better without Yao then with Yao. We can go faster and we'll have more mastery of the ball movement of Adelman. We'll be fine. Forthe first time in many seasons, we have a line-up built to weather injuries. 50 wins is just about right. If CBud and PPatterson give major contributions, we'll win 3-4 games more.
No major moves: 50 wins. 7th seed in playoffs. Lose in 7 games to the Mavericks. One added impact player: 55 wins. 4th seed in playoffs. Win 2 playoff series. Lose in 7 games to the Lakers. Two added impact players: 61 wins. 2nd seed in playoffs. Beat the Heat in 7 in the NBA Finals. One of those new added impact players wins Finals MVP.
My prediction is that the Rockets can win more games if they skip all the fancy intros and come out to the court in this manner with this music playing (forward to about 0:40) <object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/BwyKrcCW_Dw?fs=1&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/BwyKrcCW_Dw?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object>
My take is that the Rockets will get into the playoffs and if Yao, Scola and Martin are healthy at that point, they will scare the heck out of their playoff opponents.
