http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/players/2628/gamelog;_ylt=Aoa4Hdy1rsvIGj6E3GjpnzMIPKB4?year=2009 Juwan Howard back in action.. It's tough to see the potential of Greg Oden and the Trailblazers diminish.. But, what can you do? He played well against the Spurs on Wednesday, good post up presence. Not watching the game right now but.. really? Juwan Howard?
Cursed = exceeding expectations instead of falling short of them? Or are you referring to Yao/Tracy injuries? 'cause I just consider those a fact of life, at this point.
Rockets were a 50-win team, aside from 05/06, with Juwan Howard. They remained about the same after he left. I don't know how your expectations are for the seasons, but the Rockets pretty much performed up to their talent level to me with or without Howard. If you were expecting, say, the 04/05 Rockets to do more than the 07/08 team, it seems the problem was unrealistic expectaitons.
I was talking about how we performed relative to our predicted record with injuries in 05/06 vs. now and last year. Also the fact that so many expected us to beat the Jazz in '07, but not that many thought we would beat the Blazers or take the Lakers to 7 without Tracy last season. I was pretty much referring to general conensus when speaking of expectations.