This is kind of the issue I have though, is the line of thinking you've shown here, showing that all these other teams improved. We shouldn't be worried about "this team improved" in a vacuum. It doesn't matter if they improve from 30 wins to 40 wins. Or 40 wins to 45 wins. It only matters if they improve to be BETTER than the rockets. And so far, yeah, a ton of teams have improved, but they're still worse than the rockets. And don't get me wrong, I understand the frustration with the front office too. We haven't improved at all, and that's a problem. I share that frustration, I wish the team would improve. But even if we don't improve, and even if all these other teams do, we are still better than them! And that point seems to get lost.
I think the Clips can force teams to average less than 90 a game... in all honesty, the anti-ball movement strategy of the Rockets may work the best against them as less chance of being picked off against Butler-Kawhi-Bev...
Fans always overestimate teams who add new players, because they look good on paper. The Clippers are obviously a lot better, if they can play together. The Lakers are better, but who knows by how much? Remember they didn't even make the playoffs last year. The Nuggets should be better, but they benefitted last year from nobody taking them seriously. The Jazz made mostly lateral moves, for the most part; Conley should help, but who knows? And you can always count to Mitchell to try to do too much in the playoffs and fail. As for the Blazers, more lateral moves. Warriors won't be nearly as good. I just don't see where all these teams have jumped past us. Out of all of them, the Clippers are the only ones who scare me at all, and we don't even know how well they'll play together at this point.
Those responding to you are not being homers. You are just trying to give @J Sizzle a run for his money as the board’s resident negative nancy. The Rockets won 53 games last season. Austin Rivers was only part of the team for 47 games, Danuel House only played in 39 games, and Clint Capela missed 15 games due to injury. Also, during the time the Rockets had Melo and no defensive coach, they went 11-14. That means they went 42-15 the rest of the year. If you extrapolate that winning percentage over 82 games, the Rockets would have won 60 games again. This season, they have their top seven rotation pieces back and still have part of the MLE and the entire BAE to add more depth to the roster. They are absolutely a contender as it currently stands.
it was just an illustration of my point. we don't need to be chasing big names. we need to be stocking the bench.
They are now 2 years removed from that 65 win team, the older they get the more possibilities there are they will not go all the way barring some extremely insane shooting like the 60% Van vleet was displaying from 3 these playoffs. I have no clue what will happen because the playoffs start in 9 months. You can still make some trades.
It's obvious that available NBA players are not considering the Rockets seriously. Morey needs to look overseas or G league just like how he found Beverly. Looking forward to a great season and giving a big ef you to the rest of the league and media if we do well.
During major portion of that 65 win season Ryan Anderson was our starting PF not PJ Tucker and that was the time when Rockets had the best offensive rating in the history of NBA...then Anderson got injured and PJ was inserted to the starting 5...defense improved at the cost of offense..Rockets all time offense rating slided...DMA never made the move to send PJ back to the bench..Ryan Anderson never played good after return coming from bench. I think PJ shouldn't be starting PF..he is a bench player in my opinion...but if we have to play him at starting 5 then it should be at SF.
Games need to be played, like every year I feel this team will go thru inconsistencies of highs and lows. Rockets b-ball, I got used to it. If the high are the Finals and the lowest is an 8th or 9th seed so be it!!!
yes that's my point. even more reason to build depth and stop waiting to acquire another star player. the rockets want to keep flexibility until the window is closed. however, 2 years ago seems like a long time so look at last year's team. 53 wins with no defensive coach for the first 25% of the season, no bench until the trade deadline. this year we have turner, rivers, and house from day 1. even if harden, clint, and CP miss the same amount of games (which is likely for CP but not the other two) don't you think our win total improves from last year? what if we then add a backup center that can give us 12mpg every game instead every other game like nene did. that's another improvement. my point is from 53 last year its easy to see this team approaching 60 with one or two more role players. that's good enough to contend. the clippers and lakers may not be there yet.
i agree about finding oversees FAs. gustavo ayon would be target as a backup center. lets not start the llull convo again. i don't think he's likely to do that because most oversees players worth rotation minutes will want MLE money. while i agree with spending the MLE most here hate the idea of hard capping us.
