Okay. Realistically, the Rockets are done in terms of championship aspirations. But 2nd round aspirations seems still in reach. However, I feel that in order to do this, we need to avoid the 7th and the 8th seed. SA and LA are starting to separate from the pack. But everyone else, Hornets, Jazz, Mavs, Suns... none of them truly scares me. At least I feel we have a chance against them in 7 games. So now our goal for the rest of the season? Make sure we don't drop to 7th!
Our goal for the rest of the season should be to put the fear of God in every contender we see and either 1.) get the third seed behind LA and SA to face the very beatable Hornets or Mavs; or 2.) get the fourth best record in the league but fifth seed overall (where we are right now), play Utah and CLEAN THEIR CLOCKS as revenge for last year. Phoenix I don't see as having any shot of being in the top 6 seeds with the way they are (not) playing defense right now. The irony scale would break if they ran into the Lakers in the first round as an 8 seed after beating them the past two years as the higher seed. Not to mention that book that came out where all the Suns mentioned how they had no respect for Kobe or anyone on the Lakers besides Odom, and finally a little thing called Shaq v Kobe. Man this year is awesome.
yeah, playoffs of this season is gonna be awesome, and amazing, but it won't be if roxs couldn't survive first round, tmac, cross ur fingers!
i think this playoffs could end up as not being as exciting as everyone thinks. it does seem like LA and SA are kind of separating from the pack a little. they will probably win easily in the first round. then both of their 2nd round matchups will probably win in 5 or 6. the WCF should be good, but as a whole the west might not end up being the grudge match everyone thinks it will be.
We don't need to think whether some team scares us or not. Just do our best and let other teams get crazy.
It was grudge match until the trade deadline, where 1. Laker got away with highway robbery 2. Phoenix/Mav made questionable moves 3. Rox lost Yao 4. Portland shows its true color 5. Denver/GS/Utah/(Boston) becomes streaky. 6. Spur/(Detroit) wakes up Damn, if Yao is around we would be way up there. Instead we get to play the what-if game all day. However, we could still be the spoiler, aka 1999 Knicks to make some other fans cry(hopefully Utah/Mav).
How does 2.5 games start separating you from the pack. I've heard this like three times today. They get like 5 games on everybody else in the west with like 10 left, then I can give it to them, but at this point its not certain that the Lakers will have their own division locked as well as the Spurs!
