Let’s keep the Rockets’ enthusiasm in perspective

The Rockets’ first win of their final seven video games — a 102-93 house victory over a randomly disappointing Dallas Mavericks workforce on Wednesday — modified nothing.

You’ve been pressured to observe this native NBA workforce all season. You understand this is without doubt one of the worst Rockets squads in franchise historical past. And we’ve all identified since mid-February that this smartest thing for the 2020-21 Rockets is for this 2020-21 marketing campaign to be over as quickly as humanly potential.

Convey on the draft.

Cue up the lottery.

Pray for a top-four first-round choose and a pair younger franchise changers to hyperlink with Kevin Porter Jr., Jae’Sean Tate and whoever returns in pink subsequent 12 months.

Tanking has been one of many NBA’s largest issues for greater than a decade. So I’m not going to say tank, tank, tank!

However … appearing like profitable three (or 4) out of each 10 video games in the course of the subsequent month goes to magically transport the Rockets again into the league’s elite class subsequent season?

Please.

That’s the precise kind of denial that helped power the Rockets into this damaged season.

“We now have a aggressive group,” first-year Rockets coach Stephen Silas stated this week. “We now have a bunch of fellows who like one another.”

OK. So then what’s been the actual downside since December?

This roster isn’t a number of accidents away from being a championship contender. This workforce, as at present constructed, has nothing in frequent with the near-annual Western Convention contenders that Chris Paul, Dwight Howard, Mike D’Antoni, Kevin McHale and Harden spearheaded in the course of the earlier decade.

Tank?

Who must tank when you may play your finest gamers and formally be only one and a half video games higher than the last-place Timberwolves?

Extra enjoyable with numbers: The Rockets’ 7-19 house document is the worst within the NBA, and you must go all the best way again to 1982-83 to discover a Rockets workforce this dangerous. Silas’ uneven crew can be simply as dangerous on the highway (7-19) as it’s inside an eerie Toyota Heart.

John Wall is making approach an excessive amount of NBA salary-cap cash to be taking pictures a career-worst 40.4 % from the ground. The 30-year-old level guard can be averaging a career-low 6.8 assists, which signifies that his $41 million payday — it will increase to $44 million subsequent 12 months — doesn’t precisely translate into analytics-driven nightly Ws.

Coming into Saturday evening’s highway sport in opposition to the Golden State Warriors, Wall had solely performed in 33 of the Rockets’ 52 contests, whereas Christian Wooden had been restricted to simply 29 video games.

Tate has been the Rockets’ most reliable nightly participant this season. Which is nice for the 25-year-old rookie, however scary whenever you keep in mind that even essentially the most devoted Rockets followers barely knew his title when coaching camp started.

The Rockets instructed you they successfully had been giving up on 2020-21 once they traded away Westbrook and gave into Harden’s me-first commerce demand. Since then, a franchise-record 20-game shedding streak adopted and Houston’s NBA workforce has become a neighborhood and nationwide afterthought.

Harden’s overloaded Nets now are the workforce to beat within the Jap Convention. Chris Paul’s Phoenix Suns have joined the Utah Jazz — as soon as an annual playoff knockout for Harden’s Rockets — because the NBA’s finest shock.

The sport after these Rockets beat the Mavs, they struggled to remain on the hardwood versus the Paul George-less Los Angeles Clippers, had been outscored by an absurd 41-10 within the second quarter and misplaced by 17 factors.

That was extra prefer it.

It’s been a very long time because the Rockets had been this dangerous. However the perfect factor proper now’s for the Rockets to maintain racking up Ls.

Nailing the draft and making the best roster choices for 2021-22 are all that issues.

Successful a meaningless common season sport in April gained’t change something.