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I have them at 41 - 47 wins.

Around the 35 win mark

pross wrote:Around the 35 win mark

Seriously?

They won 34 in a shortened season (equals out to 42 wins in a non lockout shortened season).

PG is a sidegrade at best with lin coming in over Lowry.

Harden is a huge upgrade over Martin.

Parsons is another year older with more experience.

Stable full of young PFs to play depending on who shows something and what the matchup requires.

A great young center in Asik.

They will approach 50 imo.

Team is worse than last year imo. Theyll be .500 at best.

Somewhere around 40. They're an ok team now, but still not better than OKC, LAL, LAC, SAS, DEN, MEM, MIN, and UTA currently and may not be as good as even GSW or DAL (I doubt it, DAL supporting cast actually sucks imo even though some people may think its good (Collison, Mayo, Brand, Kaman and Marion are all average to below average players) and GSW have a whole lot of injury mess)

They'll be slightly above .500 imo. They'll have a good defense anchored by Asik and they have some nice role players, and a very interesting backcourt in Lin/Harden that could potentially be explosive. I see them around 43-46 wins

hard to compare this years team with last years and infer an equal or better record when essentially the entire lineup is different....and considering they lost guys like scola, dragic & dalembert....who may not look that great on paper, but they do have significant nba experience.

will jeremy lin regain his prime couple week form from new york?
can james harden become the go-to-guy, when he's the primary focus of opposing defenses....and not just the bench guy with a green light?
can asik be more than a 3/5 player, given more minutes? will he put too much pressure on himself to justify the contract?
will other young PFs step up and show maturity/nba skill?

for them to get near 50, all those things have to go right. for them to be .500, most of those things have to go right.
too many question marks at this point. and it's too easy to see lin struggling to live up to the hype, asik struggling with more minutes and a larger role, harden struggling with more minutes playing against starters and trying too hard be the guy, and the young pfs making too many young pf mistakes.

around 43 wins and missed out the playoffs. If they still have Luis Scola on team I would say around 46 wins, PP can't recover the lost of Luis Scola

Lin Vs Lawry (Dragic) IMO a slight downgrade consider how great Dragic was last season, I don't think Lin can be a consistent 17/7 guy like Dragic. Lawry is just a better player, too bad he was injured last season
James Harden Vs Kevin Martin IMO a moderate upgrade, people tend to underrated KMart because he was never on a winning team and the style he s playing, but the dude have mad offensive skills. James Harden is still little unproven, but talents is there, so I would say it's a nice upgrade
Parson Vs Parson Slightly Upgrade, another year of exp in NBA, should be better
Patterson Vs Scola Moderate downgrade, Patterson have his advantage, but you can't make up Scola's 16 / 7 with him just yet, eventually PP will be a better player, but Scola is a 2 tier better than him last season
Osik vs Dalembert (Camby) About the same, Osik is young and talented defensively, but he is very very raw on O, he will be better 3 years from now,butta I don't really see a improvement here.

Bench
I think Rockets Bench last year were better, too many question mark on those bench players, all unproven

Coach
McHale should be slightly better than last year


Overall, I think it's on the same tier as last year's Rockets team, mediocre for sure next season. However, future looks good tho.

crosko42 wrote:

pross wrote:Around the 35 win mark

Seriously?

They won 34 in a shortened season (equals out to 42 wins in a non lockout shortened season).

PG is a sidegrade at best with lin coming in over Lowry.

Harden is a huge upgrade over Martin.

Parsons is another year older with more experience.

Stable full of young PFs to play depending on who shows something and what the matchup requires.

A great young center in Asik.

They will approach 50 imo.

PG is a sidegrade? Don't even know what that means but replacing Dragic/Lowry with Lin is a downgrade no matter how you look at it.

Harden is a massive upgrade and is one of my favourite players, but he'll be adjusting to being "the man" so we'll have to wait and see how that plays out.

Yes you have a stable of young PF's, but you also amnestied your starter and in my eyes, a very underrated Scola. Royce White is very questionable, not in a ability, but whether he'll even make it on the floor for half the games.

I like Asik as well, but can he handle starters minutes?

Too many questions in my eyes. Put them in the East and I feel they're above .500 easily, however in the West with lower ranked teams like the Warriors/Suns improving, I think they'll be within 3-4 games either side of 35 wins.

Scola was horrible last year, if any of their 4s produce they'll be good enough to wrestle for the 8th seed.

It's not as if they lost any really good players apart from Lowry/Dragic(who was good but like Lin has a small sample size of great games)/Camby.

They lost Lowry, Dragic, Martin, Budinger, Scola, Camby, and Dalembert. The only proven player they brought in is Harden, and even he'll be adjusting to a completely new, unfamiliar role. Lin and Asik are measurable downgrades at best. Well and I guess there is Delfino too, but meh.

They're going to be a mediocre defensive team and pretty terrible offensively. I honestly can't see them winning much more than 30 games, if that...and won't even sniff the playoffs.

The thing that was key to the Rockets "success" last season despite having no star players was their bench. A second string at one time of Camby, Patterson, Budinger, Lee, and Dragic is actually a better starting lineup than some NBA teams. They had a solid 9-10 man rotation with a good balance of offense and defense. Let's look at their bench this year...

C: Greg Smith/ Cole Aldrich? Both young and unproven.
PF: Terrence Jones/ Donatus Motiejunas? Again both of these players doing well in pre-season but they're also rookies coming into the NBA
SF - Carlos Delfino? Good shooter but a downgrade from Budinger overall.
SG - Daequan Cook/ Delfino also? I guess Delfino gets some minutes both at SF and SG, but neither of these guys are really amazing players to have off the bench. Courtney Lee is better than both of these players.
PG - Tony Douglas/ Shaun Livingston/ Scott Machado? I don't even know who the backup PG will be, but definitely a huge downgrade from one of either Lowry or Dragic.

I'm a big Rockets fan but I really don't think we'll be above 0.500 this season. People tend to just do slapstick comparisons of starting lineups player by player in attempt to see how a team has changed. However, the bench is very important also not to mention how particular players strengths and weaknesses compliment each other on the court. If all the rookies have amazing years, then ya they might even make the playoffs who knows. But assuming realistic performance from their unproven players I think they'll finish between 35-40 wins.

I think it was their bench that outperformed the starters last season.

I think 40-50 games is a reasonable estimate, though 35 wins is their worst case. Simply put - even if Harden's efficiency MAY have been an effect of playing alongside Durant and Westbrook, his shot selection (3s + at rim shots + high percentage FTs) means that he likely won't have a TS% below 55%. Asik will also be important - yes, he has hands of stone, but if he manages to be half of a Tyson Chandler (and one could say that Chandler being healthy during Linsanity was the key, since he's an efficient finisher and he could cover up the team's defensive mistakes) they'll be fine.

Manimal wrote:They lost Lowry, Dragic, Martin, Budinger, Scola, Camby, and Dalembert. The only proven player they brought in is Harden, and even he'll be adjusting to a completely new, unfamiliar role. Lin and Asik are measurable downgrades at best. Well and I guess there is Delfino too, but meh.

They're going to be a mediocre defensive team and pretty terrible offensively. I honestly can't see them winning much more than 30 games, if that...and won't even sniff the playoffs.

Lowry is the only player in that list that had a substantial impact on wins. The rest have been improved through the draft or free agency.

Houston looks like a typical middle-of-the-pack "beats weak teams, gets embarrassed by elite teams" team to me.

M4P wrote:

Manimal wrote:They lost Lowry, Dragic, Martin, Lee, Budinger, Scola, Camby, and Dalembert. The only proven player they brought in is Harden, and even he'll be adjusting to a completely new, unfamiliar role. Lin and Asik are measurable downgrades at best. Well and I guess there is Delfino too, but meh.

They're going to be a mediocre defensive team and pretty terrible offensively. I honestly can't see them winning much more than 30 games, if that...and won't even sniff the playoffs.

Lowry is the only player in that list that had a substantial impact on wins. The rest have been improved through the draft or free agency.

You can't be serious. The only guys still on the team from last year that played any sort of significant minutes are Parsons and Patterson. You're telling me those two, along with Lowry, were responsible for all of their wins? Yeah, not buying that.

Also not buying that Lin is an upgrade from Lowry/Dragic, and Asik an upgrade from Dalembert/Camby. Hell, Budinger and Lee are also much better than Delfino and Jones. Literally the only upgrade they actually made was going from Martin to Harden. But I don't see it being enough to overcome everything they lost, let alone actually improve the team from last season.

25 maybe.

Too young, I guess 25-35

41-45

crosko42 wrote:

pross wrote:Around the 35 win mark

Seriously?

They won 34 in a shortened season (equals out to 42 wins in a non lockout shortened season).

PG is a sidegrade at best with lin coming in over Lowry.

Harden is a huge upgrade over Martin.

Parsons is another year older with more experience.

Stable full of young PFs to play depending on who shows something and what the matchup requires.

A great young center in Asik.

They will approach 50 imo.

Mr Morey, you might want to stop posting on realgm and try and do your job better. You also seem to forget you gave Scola away for nothing and that Asik is by no means "great".

I say 33 wins.