The Houston Rockets are broken. They’ve lost four in a row, and each one looked more pitiful than the last. Whatever scant chemistry they displayed against the Spurs on Christmas appears to be completely gone, and with it any reason to hold out hope for the team. The compact is sealed and whatever monkey’s paw granted two superstars to Houston is now balled up in a malevolent fist. The San Antonio Spurs, professionals they are, granted the Rockets a swift death in the second half. The first game of the new year brought no new beginnings for Houston, just a painful moment of clarity.
Moments of clarity are useful, so let’s take this opportunity to self-reflect. The Rockets are an embarrassment and any meaningful analysis is the fast track to depression for anyone who would prefer to see them succeed. If you enjoy watching talented individuals squander their talent and drain joy and hope from the people who care about them, by all means tune in every other day to watch the Rockets do just that. But for those of you who don’t care to feast upon the blood of fallen wunderkinds, let’s look at what resolutions we can make for the following calendar year. For those who love the Rockets like a brilliant but lazy son, resolve to let go of this and instead care for someone precious in your life. That someone can be a child, or a parent. A sibling or a friend. That someone can even be a stranger or an animal, a lost soul who will appreciate and need your aid. It’s only human to put emotional stakes in aspects of our shared identity, but this isn’t helping anyone. Someone in your life loves you very much and your feelings can actually have a positive effect on them. You could do so much good, and I believe in you. For those who have taken it upon themselves to understand and to examine this apostate team, resolve to change your perspective. We were all fooled by this team last season. By all, I mean literally everyone who pays any meaningful attention to NBA basketball. To suspect that all this would come crashing down so badly would have been ludicrous in the extreme. The only people who will say “I told you so” right now have no interest in understanding the game, or no ability to do so. We were wrong, but we have to accept we had no way to be right. So change your point of view, because this team isn’t good, and it’s ok that we were wrong. They’re a bad team, for a lot of reasons, and that’s not going to change. Start over from a new baseline and just let them be bad. For those who revel in their failures, I actually have some words after all. Resolve to look inward this year, and examine why you need this team to collapse. They’ve so thoroughly shattered the hopes of their fans, that whatever suffering you were hoping for is present in spades. But why do you seek to see other humans humiliated, to suffer because of sports? What karmic wrong do you contend General Manager Daryl Morey must pay for? What values do you hope to see propped up by James Harden’s trickery not leading to wins? The way you treat others speaks of yourself. Sports don’t really matter. Is it worth being hateful over something so small? For me, I resolve to take it all less seriously. I will have more fun and try to bring people down less often. I will find the magical and the spectacular and the unlikely in the NBA and in the Houston Rockets and I will bring that joy to you, the reader. I will focus less on why the NBA season is a formality, on how long the Warriors will crush us beneath their boot heel, on how much futility the Rockets have to look forward to. It’s a new year, and we can all be better people. It’s a time to be happy, even if the Rockets give us little to be happy about. Dwight Howard scored a team-high 22 points on 9 shots and pulled down a game-high 12 rebounds. The team actually shot quite well, with 50% overall and 40% from behind the three point line. It wasn’t really that bad of a game. The Spurs are just a lot better than the Rockets right now. Happy New Year.View this discussion from the forum.
