The Wild, Wild, West. How Do the Rockets Break in?

That Lakers team construction is a mess man. And now you have a rookie head coach having to navigate a father and a son playing on he same team. The team dynamics are so cringe. Id be shocked if they don't collapse and become a tanking team by the last third of the season. Do the Lakers have control of their own picks for the next couple of seasons? I can see a rebuild situation arising quickly on that team.

 

Odds this early in the season is more about positioning money to be split equally between over and under. That’s how Vegas attempts to massage the odds so that the money is pretty close to splitting evenly. They make their money on the 10% premium for placing a bet and avoiding losing a lot of if one size has an enormous money voted and hits. Remember in the long run the house always wins.

 

I am old enough to not be sorely disappointed by much. The geriatric 4 all went under on their projected win totals last year. Their stars are all a year older and further into their declines. I think Rockets end up top 6-8. Maybe optimistic, but I like the young core and think year 2 under Ime is going to be fun.

 

Don't kill the messenger, I don't write Vegas odds.

 

If they go on a 16 W streak anything is possible but schedule has to be favorable.

 

We will be better than all these teams.

 

It really depends what Stone is able to pull off by this trade deadline. If we're able to move dead weight for some sort of legit star then we have a chance to be one of those teams in the playoffs. If not we'll be back in the same spot next season. As currently constructed, it's hard to tell who we'll be able to beat into the playoffs.

 

Just based on the eye test, this team struggled with consistency. There was a tendency with this team to take quarters off and that led to us either getting behind early OR letting teams get back into games with a bad quarter and then our youth showed up in execution mistakes late in close games although we were MUCH better as the season progressed(10-11 in close games decided by 5 or less points and 2-5 in overtime games). I think that's largely a maturity and focus issue and it jives with much of Udoka's pressers about quarter to quarter consistency. Another fun stat - Houston trailed by double digits in 44 games this year and were 9-35 in those games. Stop taking quarters off and getting down big and we probably squeeze out 4 more wins at least.

Houston also didnt win a single game against any of these teams Celtics, Pacers, 76ers, Heat, Hawks, TWolves, Warriors. We would hope to get at least ONE win from every team in the league - that would be huge in the standings. I'm guessing Houston's focus in particular with those games against the top 10 Eastern teams was not there. We struggled to a 5-15 record against the best EC team but were a more respectable(for us at least) 16-20 against the top 10 WC teams. Breaking down those numbers a bit more, we were 9-13 against the top 6 WC teams but 4-8 against the top 6 EC teams, 7-7 against WC play-in teams but 1-7 against EC play-in teams and we were 12-4 and 8-2 against non playoff teams in the Western and Eastern conferences.

I'll also note we were surprisingly a 500 teams through December, had a rough stretch Jan-Feb and finished the season strong. My only note here is we got bullied a bit at the end of the season - part of it was losing Sengun whom we had restrcutured the offense around so that was a HUGE change, and I also think we just couldn't compete with playoff intensity when teams were starting to round into playoff form in April - the Mavs, Warriors, Heat, and Twolves all kind of bullied us in those final weeks.
Oct: 0-3
Nov: 8-5
Dec: 7-7
Jan: 7-10
Feb: 3-9
Mar: 13-2
Apr: 2-5

 

Like it. We also need to improve a bit on the road. I think we will be hard to beat at home this year because of our up tempo and the Kaos we are going to create with our defense. Do not underestimate having Amen and Tari on the floor at the same time.

 

I don’t know why people are confused about this. We were a .500 team that lost its best player (Sengun) and it’s highest impact player (Tari). Also lost Whitmore and got him back rusty. So we’re a sub .500 team. That’s not good enough to beat the top 6-8 teams in the West during any portion of the season. We didn’t do anything wrong, those were just better teams and we actually fought really hard to try to beat them.

That we went 13-2 in March - which is rare even when great teams have easy schedules - was somewhat of a miracle. It’s not something a sub .500 team usually does.

 

Screw trying to compete. Cooper Flagg was dominating team USA in a select scrimmage in the 4th.

Tank for Flagg

 

That's why I was so upset about losing that Bkn swap.... this next draft is looking stacked even without Flagg.

 

The biggest problem with this kind of prognostication is that the Rockets have so many young players and you don’t really know who’s going to make a big leap forward this year and who isn’t. That makes it harder to predict than it is for most other teams, which have known quantities. It’s an exciting problem to have, though.

 

Thx for tallying the votes.

The one that jumps out is Clippers. While they lost PG, they did get some decent role players (Derick Jones Jr). If healthy I can see them still getting a decent regular season record. People might be underselling their regular season.

 

1) Thunder
2) Dallas
3) T-Wolves
4) Grizz
5) Nuggets
6) Kings
7) Suns
8) Pelicans
9) Clippers
10) Rockets

11) Warriors
12) Spurs
13) Lakers (LeBron will be gifted Cooper Flagg or Ace Bailey)
14) Blazers
15) Utah

 

We will be in the playoffs.

 

I didn’t vote Pelicans, but if they un-load Ingram and/or Zion is hurt they probably will enter the Cooper tank parade.

 

You mean like how OKC missed the playoffs then suddenly became the no 1 seed? While I dont expect that drastic a change for the Rox there should be a similar significant improvement in performance this year due to internal growth and development.