After building some defensive momentum for the month of March, the Houston Rockets laid an egg against the Los Angeles Clippers on Wednesday. Naturally, that prompted another team meeting.
From Jonathan Feigen of the Houston Chronicle:
Pat Beverley said Rockets had a players meeting today. "I feel sorry for the team we play tomorrow. "
— Jonathan Feigen (@Jonathan_Feigen) March 17, 2016
Donatas Motiejunas feels a little differently about the situation:
D-Mo : "This is the fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth time we had a meeting. Talking shouldn't be the 1 thing we do."
— Jonathan Feigen (@Jonathan_Feigen) March 17, 2016
Solid evaluation, D-Mo.
Finally, Feigen brought us this:
A lot of Rockets' message to one another after last night was about starting better. They have led at the end of 1st quarter once in 18 gms.
— Jonathan Feigen (@Jonathan_Feigen) March 17, 2016
The Rockets are 34-34 and own the Western Conference’s seventh seed as of now. This is not the team that was supposed to provided an adequate encore to its Western Conference Finals bid last season. It’s an inferior squad, one that’s equally dependent on James Harden’s offense and cannot seem to get out of its own way on the defensive end.
These meetings start to lose weight if things don’t turn around. But the Rockets are the rare, ostensibly dysfunctional team that still has a puncher’s chance of making some postseason noise. They have the talent to compete against superior teams, and if they can snag the West’s sixth seed, they avoid a first-round matchup with the Golden State Warriors and San Antonio Spurs.
Playing the Oklahoma City Thunder, the third best team out west, isn’t the greatest alternative. They would be a title favorite in any other season. But it is a viable alternative, and the Rockets need all the wins, big or small, they can get if they’re hoping to remember this season as something more than a colossal failure.
