Ladies and Gentlemen, we are on the cusp of greatness: We are riding an 11 game win streak (threatening to break the franchise record), TMAC seems to finally have his head on straight (He came out early for shoot around b4 the NO game), and we have a beautiful 10 game ROAD win streak. What all this means is that we have caught the league's attention, but until we beat Dallas, in Dallas, will we gain some respect. I don't know what happened in between the Philly loss and now, but we have become a much better team overall. Most notably, we are road warriors. When you look at the numbers, after the philly loss, Tracy has averaged 14.4 ppg at home and 24.6 ppg on the road!!! Another notable stat is that, during the same stretch, Tracy averaged 6.4 assists per game at home and 6.6 assists per game on the road. Does the opposing crowd light a fire underneath McGrady? I am not sure what it is, but the difference in his game is like night and day. Initially I thought he was passing more at home, but it looks like he is deferring to Yao and everybody else more as can be seen by the the following stats: Yao got 15.1 attempts per game at home while Tracy got 15.3 attempts per game. On the road, Yao got 13.3 attempts per game and Tracy got 21.6 attempts per game! The point I am trying to make is that Tracy seems to perform better on the road, and take more shots on the road too. This seems to form a direct correlation in between the success of this team on the road and his performance. I'd like to believe his performance is linked to his confidence and belief that he has to carry/lead his team in a hostile environment. What it all boils down to is that I want a low seed in the playoffs. I don't what home court advantage, I want road court advantage! In Tracy we Trust! Thoughts?
Maybe we played more lousy teams on the road in this stretch. But yeah, Tmac plays better on the road for some reason. Maybe because fans in TC are not loud enough to fire him up, whereas on the road opposing fans get him motivated.
He should be motivated enough. The crowd in NO was half Houston fans and pretty much dead. His ass still came out fired up. He just has to get it in his head that there is no "depth perception" problem in Toyota Center.
It really is more difficult to win on the road than it is at home for any team. Not having the benefit of home court advantage in any playoff round is really the harder route for a team to at least make a deep playoff run. Oh well, two of the Rockets' four trips to the NBA Finals (1981, 1995) were without having the benefit of home court advantage in any one of their playoff rounds. If this Rocket team makes the playoffs with a low seed, let's just hope that this team makes the kind of playoff run that winds up being similar to what those two other Rocket teams had.
