Because sports writers cannot escape the postseason cliche-based rhetoric that they gladly peddle every year (as fan bases are too giddy or depressed by their team’s success or failure to bother being frustrated by triteness in the papers), even at the beginning of seasons, we as sports fans are presented with the drama of the “make or break” season. Angry owners and coaches feeling others nipping at their heels often tend to over-emphasize the importance of any one season prior to its start because, well, we just don’t have anything else to talk about until opening night.
This feeling probably feels vaguely familiar to Rockets fans; outside of last season’s injury-ridden affair (OK, maybe last year wasn’t that different), the Houston Rockets has been an outfit that has an outside chance to contend if the right amount of variables go its way. Those somewhat hopeful predictions are usually tempered with caution flags that warn of an impending implosion of the team if said promise is not fulfilled. This has gone on as Yao Ming’s prime has slipped away into the ether and McGrady’s health and passion disappeared similarly, a half-decade of missed attempts and broken dreams so damning that they would have left a fan base heartbroken had it not been for the machinations of one Daryl Morey and 22 games of pure bliss one winter. Still, this organization has teetered on and off of rebuilding mode for years, and given that this is a contract year (if an unusual one) for its franchise player, we may finally be on the precipice of a new age. Sadly, maybe a Yao-less age.
Many basketball viewers (including this very writer) find the concept of finances coming into play when regarding a team’s future personnel moves unseemly and cynical, but Rockets fans are not properly situated on their rockers if they don’t think that the global presence that Yao Ming has brought the Houston Rockets will be of preeminent importance as the team tries to negotiate with the giant man next summer. Rockets games are still often watched by more people than are most Super Bowls. Shane Battier, Chuck Hayes and Patrick Patterson, as great as the former two are and the latter is sure to be, all have shoe deals (hell, Ron Ron still has one from his one year in Rocket red). The Rockets may as well be China’s official team, and last I checked, David Stern has some holding interests in that part of the world.
This all means very little to the team’s on the court performance, which hasn’t ever been seen given all of the changes since the last time the big fella touched the hardwood for an actual NBA game. Most of the team’s contracts this offseason seemed suited towards keeping His Hugeness around. His Argentinian front court pal Luis Scola took in a hefty five-year deal, while Kyle Lowry and his effective entry passing was also paid above market value. Even the signing of Brad Miller seemed like a pick-up certainly aimed at curtailing too heavy a load on Yao’s shoulders (or more accurately, his recovering foot). But offseason prognostications haven’t exactly screamed “TITLE” for the Rockets; most have been the kind of moderate, semi-positive blather to which Rockets fans have grown accustomed. In fact, almost all of the preseason hype for this team whimpers, rather than yells, “mediocrity”, the one word with which no team wants to be associated.
“Rebuilding”? Maybe. David Kahn seems to think he can market that. “Outside chance”? Even better. Everyone loves a dark horse, though the Rockets have been some of the shadowiest in recent years. But “mediocre”? No team can sell that, not even in China. This organization has to be thankful that the current incarnation of the team hasn’t seen an NBA court yet, so hopes can still reign. Fans can even expect a lot of wins. But trying to sell resigning anyone, even the best thing to happen to this team in a decade, after a year of nothingness will be close to impossible.
This all leaves me with the same awful piece of meaningless nonsense I claimed to despise in the first sentence of this column, the idea of the “make or break” year; however, despite all of the new contracts, this team must think in such abstract terms. Because fans, as much as they (oh, who am I kidding? I mean “we”) wish to be considered differently, don’t think; they feel. And a max contract, even on the new max scale that is sure to come out of a new CBA next offseason (hopefully), will not feel right to a fan base that just wants to win. And doesn’t every fan base deserve that?
This team needs to win, and soon. Otherwise, the aura of good management and hope that has somehow sustained through a decade and a half of semi-irrelevance will, as much as I hate to sound cliched, break.
