3 replies to this topic

[Johnny Rocket]

The upcoming schedule is brutal. Tomorrow night is Memphis, which is the best defensive team in the NBA (as measured by defensive efficiency). On Christmas day, we face an improving Chicago team on the road that ranks 3rd in defensive efficiency. That game marks the beginning of four games on five nights, three on the road. The remaining three games are @Minnesota, @San Antonio, and at home against Oklahoma. Then begins a Jan. stretch in which we play 17 games overall, 12 on the road. It will be absolutely brutal. We'll see what kind of team we really have. I'm sure we'll see some ugly basketball along the way, but if we can hang around the .500 mark until late Feburary and early March,when the schedule gets a lot easier, we'll have a great chance to make the playoffs.

[blakecouey]

January is the true test of the season. It'll be good to see how the young guys react to all the games and how fatigue affects them.

[Sir Thursday]

I'm pretty pessimistic about January. I feel like we've had a pretty easy schedule so far in terms of travel - the majority of games have been at home and we've only had a single three game road trip. And that trip went 0-3. The upcoming schedule features three road trips of at least three games, and none of them are easy ones.

Unfortunately I haven't been able to find any pace-adjusted Home/Away split statistics, but on raw PPG the numbers look pretty bad: the Rockets score 107.3 PPG at home and only 101.0 PPG away, and opponents score only 101.9 PPG at Toyota Centre but 106.4 PPG elsewhere. That's a 10.8 point differential! Small-ish sample size, but nevertheless worrying. Away from home, we get to the line a lot less (28.1 FTA at home vs 24.1 away) and commit a couple more turnovers per game (17.1 vs 15.1). Opponents tend to shoot a couple of percentage points better too, which makes a big difference.

So yeah, hoping the team will prove me wrong, but the next month and a half is going to be a really tough test and I wouldn't be surprised if we fall away from playoff contention during it.

ST

[amacbrooks12]

Im both nervous and excited about the schedule in January. Im nervous because its going to be a brutal month schedule wise and most of our games are on the road, where we dont play well. But im excited because I have a feeling we are going to get through next month .500 or above. The team has great chemistry right now, everyone is playing well, and I really do believe the rockets won't let themselves have a terrible month.

My only worry is that we play well January, then we callapse again at the end of the season. We have to finish the season strong, especially if we have good playoff position at all star break.