If some of you youngsters think the media is anti-Rockets, you should have seen them 20 years ago. My God, the salt flowed like a flooded Mississippi river.
This is all so wrong and biased it feels like they are reading off a script written by Sir Charles (with final edit made by Herrera): Fatigue as deciding factor - Hey Blake ... if I remember correctly, didn't you get an extended rest mid-season while hurt as CP3 carried your team to #3 seed playing all 82 games? Seems like you should have been well-rested for playoffs, kinda like Dwight was for us, working your way back into shape over the last weeks of the reg season to be ready to go for the playoffs And while the Clippers were suffering a home collapse for the ages at the end of G6, wasn't it Dwight Howard who played ALL 24 minutes of the 2nd half while shutting you down completely in the 4th Q??? And didn't CP3 himself get almost a week off to rest MID-SERIES while his hammy healed? If fatigue was a key factor, how did the Clipper manage their only road win of the series in GM1, 48 hrs after an exhausting G7 win and missing their superstar PG, against a very well-rested Rockets team that sat idle for a week prior? I actually just found an updated definition from Webster's for "Carrying a team on his back" : - see James Harden's entire 81-game 2014-15 regular season Ya know, the one where he finished runner-up for MVP (and well ahead of any Clipper) by willing his team to the #2 seed with teammates who combined to miss more games than any other team in the league ... what a joke Bench/roster inferiority - When did the competency of each front office become irrelevant when discussing the superiority of 1 team over another? Is there anyone else but the Clippers to blame for a horrible bench influencing the outcome of a series, and specifically coach/GM Doc Rivers? It's not as if the commissioner descends from on high and allocates all rookies and FAs to teams as he sees fit Who forced the 'better' team to trade away up-and-coming superstar Bledsoe for JJ Redick and Jared Dudley? Who forced the 'better' team to sign Spencer Hawes to MLE? Who forced the 'better' team to trade away supersub Dudley + 1rd pick to the Bucks for nothing? Who forced the 'better' team to let Collison walk in FA and replace him with Farmar and coaches' son? They are acting like those mistakes did not directly lead to a shallow, old, ineffective rotation, and therefore do not factor into deciding the 'better' team Yet they make no mention whatsoever of the masterful job Morey did in building a great roster on the fly after losing his supposed '3rd star' in RFA, while also retaining flexibility to further improve the team this offseason Fake division defense - Maybe the stupidest part of the whole thing, which is saying quite a bit Our SW division was 2nd in history to have all 5 teams make the playoffs ... so well over half the entire WC playoff field was from our 'fake' division Meanwhile their 'real' PAC division had 2 good teams ... and 3 lotto teams including 2 of the 3 worst in the entire conference To say it another way ... When the Rockets played a division opponent this season, they had a 100% chance of playing a fellow playoff team When the Clippers played within the PAC division, they had a 25% chance of playing the league's best, and a 50% chance of playing a non-competitive joke of a team I seriously think that dumbass Lowe honestly believes the Rockets play in the NW division ... he sure is describing them like the Blazers This is all nonsense ... very similar to that coming from our own fans here If Ramona and Lowe are on your side in any argument, please first make sure everyone involved are certain in which division the Houston Rockets reside
You don't win three straight elimination games by double digits without two starters by luck. The Rockets are a better team by virtue of the depth of talent up and down the roster. The Clippers sub in scrubs like Austin Rivers, Big Baby Davis, and a vastly overrated, old Jamal Crawford. There were no game winning lucky shots in this series. If anything, the Clippers were lucky the Rockets let Austin Rivers score points out of just hustling a lot.
If you're gonna go straight statistics here (past performance is the best predictor of future results) and use models to prove the Clippers remain the BETTER team, that's fine ... You can't ignore that past performance conclusively determined this: 0.0000000% chance a team led by either Chris Paul or Blake Griffin would ever get out of the 2nd round of the playoffs If we all want to exist in this rigid world where nothing changes going forward, why would anyone give the Clippers even the slightest chance to advance past the Rockets, a team led by 2 stars who had BOTH already closed out a Semifinal series? Even down 3-1, the statistics would tell you there was 100% CHANCE that CP3, Griffin and DJ would find a way to will their team to defeat ... we know conclusively, over a very large sample size, that those guys never win after 1st RD ... right? Doc Rivers too ... now the only coach ever to have blown two 3-1 series leads How did we not see this coming from the beginning? At this point, CP3 is verging on McGrady territory ... or do you all still believe it was a fluke the only Yao team to ever advance was the only one that DIDN'T also feature Tmac? After 10 years, a spade is a spade ... Time to accept CP3 and Blake as cancers that PRECLUDE their teams from winning in the playoffs after the 1st RD .... of course this was all tongue-in-cheek Just making light of the notion that the Clippers remain 'BETTER' than the Rockets solely because out-dated STAT models still say they SHOULD have won the series ... WOULDA, COULDA, SHOULDA
What does he mean "fake division"? All the teams made it to the playoffs. We won the toughest division in the league! Lowe must have lost a bet somewhere anyway I hope we keep trashing their predictions. The media hates being shown up to be non-experts. Hopefully we have the last laugh.
<iframe src="https://vine.co/v/eAKEF75UJ7J/embed/postcard?audio=1" width="480" height="480" frameborder="0"></iframe><script src="https://platform.vine.co/static/scripts/embed.js"></script> Yet, the Clippers were better.
It would be boring, less special if everyone believed. This is like movies from the 80's and 90's that pitted the cool, popular, arrogant guys against a rag tag group of sportos, motorheads, geeks, bloods, wastoids, dweebies, and dickheads. We've got an old fashion Snobs vs. Slobs showdown.
That's fine. It's no big deal. I guess I've always griped about the division thing. My point is simple, conference record just carries more meaning than division title. You are right that there are other things, such as b2b wins, that carry a lot of weight. But those things are kind of tedious. Conference record is already a tie-breaker for non division winners. Why not put it ahead of division title? In fact, many people already believe that a division winner being guaranteed a top 4 seed is a travesty. This year's Portland is an obvious example.
They were better than the Rockets, with the exception of the 4 games out of 7 they lost to those same Rockets...
All conference schedules are not the same. The Clippers had an easier schedule. When Clipps played a Division game they only played a play-off caliber 1 in every 4 games. When Rockets played a division game they played a play-off team every time.
"Better" is a subjective term. There are lots of ways to measure which team is better than which. Who has more star players, who is more fun to watch, who is better "on paper" (still subjective), but at the end of the day, we measure better by one metric: wins. It is the objective measure used to determine who makes the playoffs and who doesn't. And is the objective measure we use to determine who moves on from one round to the next, and ultimately, it's the objective measure used to determine the champion. By this metric, the Houston Rockets are better than the LA Clippers. Using any other metric is a fools errand for a few reasons, one of which being that before anyone plays any games, wins is agreed upon by all the teams as the metric used to crown a champion. There will always be other metrics you can use to skew the results in anyone's favor. There always will be. But they are irrelevant.
Exactly ... those 4 games are a whole different ballgame when played against SA, MEM, DAL and NO rather than GS, PHX, SAC and LAL
How did the Clippers have an easier schedule when they played pretty much the same opponents the same number of times as the Rockets?
Houston played 16 total vs SW Div's 4 other teams (4 games per team) We played 18 total vs PAC Div's 5 teams (3.6 games per team): GS - 4 LAC - 4 LAL - 3 PHX - 4 SAC - 3 LAC also played 16 total vs PAC Div (4 per) They played 18 total vs SW Div's 5 teams (3.6): DAL - 3 HOU - 4 MEM - 4 NO - 3 SA - 4 So basically, when we had to play 1 extra game apiece against Mavs and Pels, they got to play Lakers and Kings ... not exactly the same Also while they only had to play our 8/9 contender 3 times (NO), we had to play theirs 4 times (PHX) ... that's another game right there Not a huge diff in the big picture, but I've already isolated 3 games where the Clippers' weaker division gave them on opponent inferior to our SW division counterparts
It's really hard to remember back then how I even know this stuff before the internet. But man, that Rockets 1994 champion insert on the front page of SI still basically stopped me from ever buying an issue of SI for the rest of my life. I think I have subscribed to every other major magazine during my lifetime except SI.
LOL at people who think sports decides or has anything to do with who is *better*. Sports decides who *wins*. No more, no less. Better is a unicorn.
