Before we start, I want to thank everyone who has even read one of these this season. They\u2019ve always been a fun way to talk about basketball and the Houston Rockets specifically. A huge round of appreciation for Xiane and Holly, who each grabbed a couple of previews back in January while I was abroad for my brother\u2019s wedding.<\/p>\n
As for tonight\u2019s game, the Houston Rockets are resting everyone since they are locked into the fifth seed in the Western Conference. Their opponent will almost assuredly be the Denver Nuggets, who are resting everyone but Nikola Jokic against San Antonio. Jokic needs 20 minutes to reach his 65 games mark. Meanwhile, the Spurs have every incentive to win that game because it pushed Denver to OKC\u2019s side of the bracket, meaning San Antonio might get a pathway of Phoenix and Minnesota on their way to the Western Conference Finals. Again, the Spurs are my pick to win it all this season. And next season. And the season after that one.<\/p>\n
The Memphis Grizzlies would very much like to lose this game. As things stand, they are tied with the Dallas Mavericks for the sixth-best odds in the lottery. A win could move them into a tie for seventh, where they could lose the tiebreaker with Atlanta on a coin flip. So winning tonight could be the difference in several ping pong balls and their floor dropping from 10 to 12. They would be stupid to try to win.<\/p>\n
Tonight is probably a Reed Sheppard night. It\u2019s also a great chance for J.D. Davison and Isaiah Crawford to get some run.<\/p>\n
A win tonight matches Houston\u2019s record from last year, when they were the 2 seed. It also bears mentioning that Houston went 41-41 two seasons ago and were five games out of the play-in. That same record would put them in a fight for the 8 seed this season.<\/p>\n
Of course, I\u2019ll be back for the playoff game previews. That schedule hasn\u2019t been released yet and won\u2019t until sometimes this week. Houston will play on Saturday or Sunday, and more than likely every game will be the late game.<\/p>\n
Kevin Durant, Alperen Sengun, Amen Thompson, Jabari Smith Jr.: OUT<\/p>\n
Everyone you\u2019ve heard of: OUT<\/p>\n
The Line (as of this post)<\/p>\n
Looking ahead because we can<\/p>\n
Game 1 on the road against either the Denver Nuggets or Los Angeles Lakers<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Before we start, I want to thank everyone who has even read one of these this season. They\u2019ve…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":245891,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[56,58,57,6330],"class_list":{"0":"post-245890","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","11":"tag-rockets-game-previews"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245890","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=245890"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245890\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/245891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}