With EVERYONE healthy, how good are we?

Remember last year the undermanned rockets took the mavericks to seven games. I don't think dallas can stick with the rockets fully healthy.

 

Lets win some games first.

 

If we make the playoffs, I hope it's as a 6th (against the northwest winner) or 7th seed (pacific winner). An 8th seed against the spurs is a waste of time and all we'll have to show for this injury riddled season is them talking $hit about T-Mac not getting out of the first round and a mid to late teens draft pick.

 

When healthy we are the third most balanced team in the league behind Detroit and San Antonio.

The Rockets have a very good balance of defense and offense, when healthy.

We can beat anybody in the nation and the world, when healthy.

 

I think if everyone is healthy, we make it to the playoffs, and the Spurs are the first round opponent - we get punked.

My heart wants to say we put it together and pull a huge upset. My head says no way in hell the defending champion Spurs let a .500 team win more than a game or two in round one. The gap is just too wide.

I also don't think that "EVERYONE" will ever be simultaneously healthy for a long stretch - we have a lot of old, broken down, injury prone players, the odds are against it happening for too long.

I don't think we'd have much of a chance against Dallas either. The mavs seem to have gotten better this year, and we've gotten worse, thus far.

 

Does healthy include or exclude Bob Sura?

Sura is not all-star, but adds so much to the team. With him, I say legitimate NBA title contenders.

With everyone else except him, and chemistry of playing together for more than few weeks, lose in the Western Conference Finals.

 

My take as well; the Rockets are still missing a few parts (see my sig.), and the Mavs are getting scary. I would be happy with the eight spot.

 

A pretty good team but not NBA final ready and we don't have the base of young players that I would like for the future. CD has a lot of work to do replacing our outgoing players. Unlike others on this board, I don't expect to get an impact player with these expiring contracts that we have, look at the track record Wesley for JJ, Liu for JB, Mutumbo for Piatowski, MoT for Mooch. Mike James was an exception, he came cheap, but until he went to Toronto I didn't think he could be a starter.

Unless we want to take on a horrible contract don't expect that we can get a Ricky Davis, Ron Artest, Peja type of player. Trading partner teams are looking for the same things we are, young athletes that can shoot and play defense, we just don't have the assets.

 

Agreeing with the line of your signature, with all due respect to Howard and his scoring, we still have the same problem we had last year - no capable PF. In the PF-laden WC, that means your playoff run isn't going to last too long. I also think that we have even fewer shooters than we had last year. Last year at least we had Padgett & James to go along with Barry. This year we have Head & Alston instead. That's a definite downgrade.

 

Definetly top 5 in the league. Tied 2nd to the Suns in the west. When playoffs become a reality, I really want us to challenge them in the playoffs and have yao and swift on what, Stoudemire and Diaw/Kurt Thomas? come on...Amare will be rusty, Kurt Thomas sucks and Diaw won't hang with our big men on the bench. Tskitishvili, who was just traded to the suns today won't make that much of a difference either. Our frontcourt has advantage on them I believe...

Tmac will hold down Marion the whole game, and we just need Rafer or Wesley to play great D and hold down nash.

They play a run and gun offense, we can slow them down and make them run our game. I like our odds against them instead of spurs in the 1st in IMHO.

 

I am just curious what makes everyone else so confident? Because we just beat Bucks and Bobcats?

 

In routs. And we beat the Bulls, and we very nearly beat the Pistons. And the fact that even with only a half-healthy roster we were able to go 5-1 on a 6 game road trip this season. And we're getting Yao back. And Bobby Sura could be back before playoffs. Its easy to forget how good this team really is when you've been down on your luck for so long, but I know what we have, and we're supposed to be hanging with the elite.

 

And don't forget that last year Rox had great chemistry in the end, team was rolling into the playoffs with great momentum, stole two games from Dallas and yet still lost next three and ended with losing 40pts in the final game.

This year's team is worse than last year's. How come they are title contender?

 

Sounds like a lot of wishful thinking there. Hold down Marion. Hold down Nash. Hold down Amare.

 

Beating a team with 18-23 record? Is it supposed to be a big deal?

Utah actually DID beat Pistons twice and sweep the series. You don't think they are title contenders, do you?

 

thats hard to say, because Dallas seems way more cohesive this year as evident by their record.

 

What a difference a few days make,

...unless Jon Barry and Bob Sura and Derek Anderson channel the spirits of Rick Barry, Bob Petit, and Anderson Hunt from UNLV, respectively - the answer is:

not very.

2nd or 3rd in the west is right -- from the bottom.

 

Now we know it's not good enough to beat the Griz

 

I say give them 10 more games to gel with Yao and hopefully get at least one of barry or da back. Then it will be getting too late to make a run if they can't at least gel & win 6 or 7 of the next 10. Sura in another 3-4 weeks would have to play monster for us and we'd have to win 80% of our games to have a chance.

But a top 5 draft pick does have some advantages....