Intrigued? You should be. Even worse than Donald Trump’s +2,500 odds to win the election posted back in August, the Houston Rockets entered the new year as +3,500 underdogs. How did the odds makers give Trump more credit than Harden? We may never know. Perhaps they know something we don’t. Just the same though, some good money could still be won on the oft-forgotten squad from the Deep South.
When you think of Texas teams, your mind immediately goes to San Antonio or Dallas. Yes, they’re two major cities with rich history, but they’re also two teams of major relevance in this decade. The Mavs won the title in 2011, while the Spurs took the gold in 2014 – their fifth championship since 1999. So why should we care for the Rockets?
Well, for one, they may have the 2017 NBA MVP running the floor every night in James Harden. The man is putting together his best season ever and is also drawing comparisons to two-time MVP Steve Nash in the process. While Nash never won a ring, Harden’s chances at his first are increasing daily. The NBA betting line at TopBet has bumped the Rockets odds up to +1,000 – a huge jump from their December pegging at +3500.
The Rockets finished their 2015-16 campaign with a 41-41 record, stumbled into the playoffs and were bounced in five in the first round. They then dumped Dwight Howard’s gigantic salary from their books to start the offseason and added Eric Gordon and Ryan Anderson. The team then went “all in”, as coach Mike D’Antoni so delicately put it, and grabbed Lou Williams at the deadline. Prior to the trade halt last month, Gordon and Williams were in a dogfight for the NBA’s Sixth Man of the Year and now their both sporting the same colors.
Why else have the team’s odds jumped so quickly? Well, injuries have started striking. Cleveland lost Andrew Bogut just 58-seconds into his Cavalier tenure, hurting them ever so slightly. The marquee injury on the map though was Kevin Durant going down for Golden State. He suffered a hyperextended knee against the Wizards on February 28th and is still out indefinitely with no return date set. Without KD, the team lost two straight for the first time in years. The is excellent news for Houston as his absence could be the key to a Western Conference Finals visit.
From there, it would likely be a Spurs-Rockets matchup. Now, the Spurs have run the table and gone 4-0 against Houston this season, but three of those wins were by two-points or less. The all-Texas matchup is an enticing possibility and with the Warriors searching for chemistry in March, it could be a reality soon enough.
