We are three weeks away from opening night for the Rockets, when they open their season at against Cooper Flagg, Kyrie Irving and the Dallas Mavericks. It seems hard to believe, but the day is fast approaching. I thought now would be a good time to ask what your expectations are for the season, the playoffs, and what constitutes a successful season. Also, generally, what do you expect to to see from the Rockets?<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s look at something that\u2019s a matter of public discourse, and of course, betting, in this brave new world of sports leagues promoting gambling. Let\u2019s consider season win totals for the Rockets.<\/p>\n
(The usual caveats about injuries and other catastrophes apply.)<\/p>\n
Right now the range for season win totals for the Rockets seems to be from about 46 to 48 wins. This seems like a lot of regression for a team that won 52 games the past two years, and should honestly be better. They should be better because they\u2019ll have a seasoned point guard running the show, and a bench that despite not wowing anyone with summer signings, should be far more useful than the bench of last season, overall.<\/p>\n
Further, it\u2019s not crazy to think the Rockets might have won 60 games last season, as they did in fact surrender 19 fourth quarter or overtime leads. If they\u2019d won just under half those games, there\u2019s your 60 wins. I can\u2019t say this enough, this number is jaw droppingly bad, and extraordinary. It\u2019s difficult to find much of anyone talking about it, and if they do, the conclusions roughly seems to be that this event doesn\u2019t fit any normal patterns and is an outlier. Outliers being something that did in fact happen, but we\u2019ve chosen to pretend they didn\u2019t because they tend to drag our account of things out of coherency. But it did happen, even if it\u2019s weird and bad.<\/p>\n
Viewed in a positive way, not having so many blown leads boosts the argument for a higher win total.<\/p>\n
Viewed in a negative way, it might point to a deep flaw in the players, team construction, approach to the game, or coaching. It might be some, or all of those. Which suggests what seems to be a suppressed win total isn\u2019t that suppressed after all.<\/p>\n
All that said, I\u2019d go over, and hit good old 52 wins again, as a target, with a bias to higher, if I did such things as bet win totals.<\/p>\n
First, yes, I think the Rockets are a playoff team. There\u2019s a tremendous amount of talent on this roster. There\u2019s no reason to believe in a steep decline for Kevin Durant until we see signs of one. There\u2019s reason to believe that the somewhat plodding, low mistakes, organization of Fred Van Vleet will be far better than Kevin Freaking Durant initiating the offense.<\/p>\n
So I think the Rockets place between 3-6 in the NBA, inside the playoffs.<\/p>\n
If they don\u2019t win their first round series, I expect Udoka to be fired. I don\u2019t think they can win a first round series with Udoka, but we\u2019ll see. It would be hard to pick a weaker opponent than the very injured Lakers, and they won handily.<\/p>\n
Normal expectations, for a team that had shown some success in the playoffs might be to make the Western Conference Finals, but we\u2019re going to have to give Udoka a golf handicap here. He\u2019s shown no sign of being up to par in the playoffs. So let\u2019s say a single series win is success, and we should expect at least that.<\/p>\n
The Rockets are like 22 to 1 to make the NBA Finals and 50 to 1 to win them, so if you\u2019ve got a lot more confidence than me in the playoff future of the Rockets this season, those are attractive odds.<\/p>\n
First, I\u2019m a Rockets fan, as approximately one zillion articles here will attest. I want them to win, to succeed, and if possible, dominate. I want to see another title before I\u2019m dead. I don\u2019t have some grudge that makes me want to see them fail.<\/p>\n
Two, I think there is tremendous amount of talent on this team. I mean, there\u2019s Kevin Durant, still able to do Durant things. There\u2019s Amen Thompson, who could find an offensive breakout, or at least go back to being a DPOY candidate. At least? Yes, at least, that\u2019s how high his defensive potential is. There\u2019s Alperen Sengun, who might be greatly helped by having FVV back directing point of attack defense (though I think the biggest defensive weak point isn\u2019t Sengun, it\u2019s Durant). We can hope he\u2019ll be more efficient, though I think the easiest way to see that would be to use him differently.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s Jabari Smith, who has quietly become a very good overall player, and is still in the growth stage of his career. There\u2019s Steady Freddy Van Vleet, who can at least run offense. There\u2019s Reed Sheppard, who put on that muscle everyone wanted, and was a top 10% three point shooter by percentage, and a top 6% three point shooter by volume. There\u2019s Tari Eason, who got paid and is apparently now happy, and man mountain Steven Adams who might stay healthy. I think we\u2019re going to see quite a lot of Marcus Smart, also.<\/p>\n
Three, my fear is, this team is limited by coaching. There\u2019s plenty of talent to be excellent here. Unfortunately, I feel as though if you gave Ime Udoka a roster of Damien Lillard, Steph Curry, Kevin Durant, Michael Porter Jr and Karl Anthony Towns, that he\u2019d insist on playing the exact way the Rockets play now. Defense first, despite literally no good defenders, but great scorers and shooters. At least that team would have a couple of guards to initiate offense.<\/p>\n
All that said, I think the regular season should be enjoyable, even if that enjoyment comes on the knife edge of Fred Van Vleet\u2019s health (I don\u2019t think anyone will enjoy Smart as full time PG). If the Rockets can get more guard play from VanVleet, Smart and Sheppard, and have Adams around to help dominate the boards again, they can make it work in the regular season, and probably finish top four. After that, all bets are off.<\/p>\n
I think the Rockets have the talent to be great, and the coaching to be good, and that should lead to a successful regular season. I want to enjoy that as much as I can. What are you expectations? I\u2019d put up a poll, but I still can\u2019t.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"We are three weeks away from opening night for the Rockets, when they open their season at against…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":866654,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[3200,355,79540,365528,99],"class_list":["post-866653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-commentary","tag-nba","tag-rockets-analysis","tag-rockets-schedule","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/866653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=866653"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/866653\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/866654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=866653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=866653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=866653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}