{"id":232875,"date":"2026-04-03T03:43:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-03T03:43:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/232875\/"},"modified":"2026-04-03T03:43:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-03T03:43:08","slug":"houston-rockets-clinch-a-playoff-spot-for-second-consecutive-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/232875\/","title":{"rendered":"Houston Rockets clinch a playoff spot for second consecutive season"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.houstonchronicle.com\/sports\/rockets\/\" data-link=\"native\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"\">Houston Rockets <\/a>are officially in the NBA playoffs for a second consecutive season.<\/p>\n<p>When Phoenix lost to Charlotte on Thursday, the Rockets clinched a spot in the top six in the Western Conference.<\/p>\n<p>The Rockets (47-29) are currently the fifth seed, one game ahead of No. 6 Minnesota (46-30). Houston trails Denver (49-28) for the fourth seed by 1\u00bd games.<\/p>\n<p>Houston has six games left in the regular season and face Utah at home on Friday.<\/p>\n<p>Oklahoma and San Antono have clinched the top two seeds in the West. They will play the 7th and 8th seeds from the play-in tournament.<\/p>\n<p>The Lakers (50-26) are currently the third seed.<\/p>\n<p>If the current seedings hold, Houston would play Denver in the first round in a best-of-seven series starting either April 18 or 19. The Nuggets won the season series 3-1.<\/p>\n<p>The Rockets and Timberwolves have split their two regular-season games and play again on April 10.<\/p>\n<p>Last season, Houston returned to the playoffs after a four-year absence and earned the No. 2 seed but lost in the first round in seven games to Golden State.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Houston Rockets are officially in the NBA playoffs for a second consecutive season. When Phoenix lost to&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":220944,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[56,58,57],"class_list":{"0":"post-232875","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston","8":"tag-houston","9":"tag-houston-headlines","10":"tag-houston-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232875","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232875"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232875\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/220944"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}