red96 wrote:dreamshake wrote:K_chile22 wrote:No one, outside of Rockets fans, said this before this season started.
Are you serious? Not a Rockets fan at all, but I would easily take that Rockets supporting cast over OKC's assuming equal health. Would've said that before the season as well no question. The difference in perimeter shooting especially is just night and day and I didn't need to see the start of the season to know that.
You may have felt that way but the general census wasn't so optimistic.
5 analyst's from CBS Sports gave the Rockets an average of 44 wins and the Thunder 45.
Bleacher report 42 wins 46 Thunder
fivethirtyeight.com 45 50
ESPN 41 44
Vegas 43 45
Fox Sports 41 45
USA Today 40 44
All of them had the Rockets as a borderline .500, 8th seed at best team before the season with the Thunder being around 4 games better. Either they felt that Harden had superior talent around him, but Westbrook was so superior to Harden that it would make up the difference (and then some), or that the Thunder's roster and star player were just as talented as the Rockets if not more. I think the latter is more likely. How many people raved about Harrell, Dekker, and Capela before the season?
1. I think Harden has been a lot better than people expected after his previous season.
2. Gordon and Ryan Anderson have been very injury-prone and I think a lot of people were counting on less than full seasons from them, which may still be true. OKC's team is younger and doesn't have the injury history that those guys do, yet so far it's one of their best players (Oladipo) who has already missed 9 games. Which is why I qualified my statement with "assuming equal health".
3. Many people expected Houston to have one of (if not THE) worst defenses in the league. Instead they've been about league-average and only about 1.5pts/100 poss worse than OKC's. This is likely the biggest reason for them overperforming relative to expectations. And I think a lot of that is due to effort given relative to previous seasons by Harden (more than expected) and Westbrook (less than expected).
4. Capela in particular was talked about plenty before this season. He was already pretty good last year and his improvement this year isn't surprising considering he's only 22. I don't know why you're mentioning those 3 guys as if Gordon, Anderson, Ariza and Beverly don't exist.
Houston is #5 in the league in 3P% and OKC is #29. And Houston takes almost TWICE as many (#1 in the league). That's a massive difference in the area of the game that is driving the league right now. Houston just flat out has better shooters and that was blatantly obvious before the season. I don't see why that's controversial.
If he has a shot, than why not guys on 30 win teams? 20 win teams even. An MVP player is only good enough to get his team to .500? No freaking way.
