The NBA’s final regular-season standings and playoff seedings may say the Houston Rockets are the fourth-best team in the Western Conference, but not many people seem to actually believe that.
Sure, the Rockets’ 53-29 final record was a 14-game drop-off from a season ago, but there were myriad factors that played into that.
First off, there was a brutally lethargic 11-14 start over the first two months, born out of not yet having gotten over last season’s conference finals meltdown vs. the Warriors; the struggles in reconstructing the defense after losing Trevor Ariza to free agency, and assistant coach Jeff Bzdelik — widely considered the architect of their successful scheme — to temporary retirement; plus the subtraction-by-addition Carmelo Anthony experiment that quickly went wrong.