Rockets are currently sitting at 9-9 after 18 games (about 21% of the regular season). 7-3 at home and 2-6 away. 3rd in the division and 9th in the conference. Strength of schedule: .522. Schedule so far: Pistons W Hawks W Trailblazers L Nuggets L Grizzlies L Pistons W Heat L Hornets/Pelicans W Trailblazers L Lakers L Jazz L Bulls W Knicks W Raptors W Thunder/Zombie Sonics L Jazz W Lakers W Spurs L Next 18 games: Mavericks (home), Spurs (home), Wizards/Bullets (home), Celtics (home), Raptors, Knicks, Sixers (home), Grizzlies (home), Bulls, Timberwolves, Spurs, Thunder, Hawks (home), Pelicans (home), Bucks, Cavaliers, Lakers (home), and Pelicans. What are we expecting from this point forward? Given how most of the board came into the season with low expectations (board consensus 25-30 wins, Hollinger: 27, Vegas Over/Under: 30.5 - all before Harden; board consensus after Harden: 30-35), have the results of the first 18 games affected your expectations? What record do you expect the Rockets to end with at the close of the regular season? Moreover, do the Rockets make the playoffs? I'm inherently a fairly pessimistic person with a large splash of cynicism mixed in but I'm going to go out on a limb and say the Rockets finish with 40-45 wins. Just missing or barely making playoffs. I expect this is the general board consensus, but was curious to see if that was the case.
We are not bad enough to get a top pick and we are not good enough to win the championship. Thus I don't really care how our record ends up, I think it is more important for this franchise to see Harden continue to develop his game as an allstar, Jeremy Lin to break out, Asik/Parsons/Patterson to continue what they are doing consistently over the course of the season.
Looks like we won't get a high draft pick. We cannot make playoff either. Basically, nothing has changed from last season.
Are you posting next year's schedule? Got some Pelicans listings on there This difference is the same .500 record on THIS team is actually a DIFFERENT kind than previous teams. For the YOUNGEST team in the league, it means its an encouraging sign of BETTER things to come. I still think why not play the rookies more with some strategic tanking in mind. But I guess Rockets feel young players can get the development time in D-League and can "up-develop" them, instead of drafting Anthony Davis you cultivate what you have. My expectations is 35 wins is about par for this course, and anything past that is encouragement.
It's a much better outcome this time though compared to previous seasons. Youngest team in the NBA, lots of upside, max cap space, young star already in the fold...
That's reasonable. I think we will win two or three more than that, myself. But we should be around .500.
Wrong. We now have a much younger team with much more upside. We just condensed the season of losing into one offseason.
40 - 45 but that's pretty good for such a young team thrown together right before the season. Sure not all of these young players are going to pan out but you have to expect a least a few of these players to get better for next year. Add room under the cap for a max player and I would say things are looking up.
Right after the Harden trade, I thought 34 wins. But with what I've seen over the past 18, I think it'll be more like 36 or 37. And for anyone that thinks that us getting the 14th pick again this year means that we're still treading water, that nothing's changed, isn't thinking long-term. The entire team has been turned into the youngest team in the NBA. To have the same record as last year with a much younger team means that our future is bright. This team is NOTHING like last year's, in which all players had already hit their peaks. This team has another 3-4 years to go before most of the players are near the tops of their games. That's vast improvement, if we finish with the same winning percentage or better this season. And if we don't, I'd be worried...except that we already have one more star on our roster than we had last season.
:grin: I voted 45-50 wins. Our offense is fine. We just need a defensive power forward similar to Iblocka to help Asik then 45-50 wins shouldn't be too hard to achieve.
