Recognition is nice, I suppose. Honestly, I prefer flying under the radar and surprising people in May/June, not December.
Being ranked #1 is great!! Houston teams' losing has conditioned their fans to constantly walk on eggshells. Fans from the only squad who has won championships can't even be confident. Thanks, franchises..... Spoiler ... for nothing
Nets beat the CAVS. They are also a pretty damm good 3 point shooting % team, better than the rockets according to the numbers. Yea they may not be serious contenders but they are the Jazz of the East. Give them a couple years and they will start to compete. Gotta remember Billy King was the GM for Brooklyn for the majority of their excistance, dude ruined their salary, and had nothing to show for; kinda hard to recover rapidly after horrid salaries tied into old ass players and luxury tax penalties. Dude was so bad he almost made the owner sell the team. Any ways, give BK credit for competing bc they do most nights just FYI
But it wasn't the 3-point shooting that kept them in the game. The Rockets mentally weren't there last night. No interior defense, poor transition defense, and some of the worst free throw shooting I've seen in a long time from players who are usually reliable at the line. I'm not saying the Nets don't have their strengths and that they can't beat any team on a given night. But what scares the crap out of me with these rankings is that the players will get wind of it and let it go to their heads. And then give a performance like the one we witnessed.
Out of 30 teams in the NBA Rockets have only lost to 7 total teams and within those 7 teams Rockets have split the series on 4 of those teams. Those teams being: OKC 1-1 UTAH 1-1 LAL 1-1 SAS 1-1 Not bad at all if you ask me
Players must acknowledge when they don't play well even after a win and they clearly did if you listened to the post game conference. I also believe MDA is a good enough coach to let them know to keep that stuff irrelevant to what actually matters. Doesn't concern me because we could've easily let one slip in Denver after we beat GS but we didn't . They blew Denver out and kept it moving. Rockets issues have been at home surprisingly, what I do fear is that they've played so many road games that they've become more comfortable traveling than actually playing at home. Ryno shoots better away than he does at home, FT shooting is better away than at home, we average more points away than at home, defensive rating is better away than at home, these are all signs of a team who's clearly more comfortable away because we've been on the road so much. I do believe they will eventually balance themselves out it just takes a little to adjust. We will be fine
Rockets are 18-7 . how could we of lost to 8 teams? Also we prefer 'Houston Rockets' instead of 'NBA Rockets'
1st Quarter grades from CBSSports: http://www.cbssports.com/nba/news/n...-as-expected-lakers-bulls-pleasant-surprises/
Disappointed that it was that close against the Nets. The team admitted they took them lightly. The interior defense was terrible. Capela cannot guard strong post players and Nene only does a marginally better job. Thank god they let Lin play after all.
CBS downgraded us a spot since last week. #mediaconspiracy http://www.cbssports.com/nba/news/n...n-playoff-hunt-lakers-the-leagues-worst-team/ The Rockets had the best record in December at 15-2, are undefeated on back to backs this season (no other team can claim this), and James Harden just dropped the best modern-era triple-double with a 53-16-17 line. Oh, and Houston was the sixth best team defensively in December. We need to start thinking of Houston as a top-tier team in this league.
We are 17-3 in our last 20 games, which is a sample equivalent to about a quarter of a regular season. Granted the schedule was fairly easy during that stretch, I don't think anyone can reasonably doubt we are a top 5 team anymore. While people will wonder about our style vs the playoffs and Harden's effectiveness in the playoffs, I look at the past 2 years and see that the #1 problem with our team in the last 2 playoffs was that the offense came to a grinding halt with iso ball and teams were able to shut it down + we didn't have good enough shooters to space the floor. Teams packed it in and ran shooters off the line and it worked. Harrell and Dekker are second year players playing significant minutes for the first time, they will be better by season's end. Capela will have an entire regular season as starter to add to his 2 playoff series - one included a WCF run, both playoffs included competing against the Warriors. I think Capela will continue to impress. Can Spurs/Warriors/Cavs say they have 3 rotation players who will be better in 4 months than they are right now? Doubt it. The game will certainly slow down but we have looked good against the Cavs, Spurs and Warriors in the regular season, and none of those games were low intensity games. We are 3-2 against that group, all of the games were close. I do think we need to just keep an eye out for a couple of cheap clever signings to replace Ennis and Brewer with a 3rd string big guard and a 3rd string C. It won't necessarily impact our record but it looks like we will have plenty of blow outs and should be weary of Bev/Nene nagging injuries. The only other thing we can do is go all in, decide to operate above the cap this coming summer, and consider dealing some of KJ/Nene/Gentile/2017 1st/2017 2nd and Brewer if anyone will take him. Get one really solid piece, preferably a SG with size who can provide backup minutes at the 3 or be paired with Bev/Gordon in the 2nd unit. Essentially a Brewer who can shoot and play slightly better defense. These minor tweaks would really cement us in that 3rd seed spot and have us chasing 2nd seed all season.
