The Houston Rockets ended their regular season on Tuesday night with a razor-thin 112-111 defeat to fellow Western Conference playoffs contender, the Oklahoma City Thunder. With the Portland Trail Blazers logging three straight wins to close out their season, the Rockets fell to the fourth spot in the West, and will face the Utah Jazz in the first round.
It was a bit of a sour end to the regular season, but considering how they started the year, it’s actually pretty impressive how the Rockets were able to completely turn it around. Team general manager Daryl Morey recently spoke to Kelly Iko of The Athletic, and admitted that early in the season, he was actually quite fearful of how things would eventually turn out for his team.
“I was in sheer … I would say, terror,” Morey said. “Working with two of the best ever in James Harden and Chris Paul, it really makes you want to make sure you’re not fucking this up. It sucked. We’re not used to being 11-14. We haven’t even had a losing season in 13 years. I was just like, ‘Holy shit, how are we going to turn this around?’”
All his fears were quelled, however, once reigning MVP James Harden started to get it going.
“Little did I know, James Harden was just around the corner to save our ass,” explained Morey. “He was like, ‘We’re good.’ I don’t know why you even worry when you have the best player in the league. We were scrambling to figure out who do we add, who do we change, what trades do we make, what do we do?
“And to my point, it was a little bit of what we were able to do, but a lot of what James did and Chris and Clint (Capela), when they came back. Eric (Gordon) started slow, and he’s been killing it. We’re not under any delusion, but we just want to make sure we’re not making it worse.”
The Rockets have indeed been playing extremely well in the second half of the season, but in truth, all that is now thrown out the window. The playoffs is a whole different monster, but with Harden on your side, you can be pretty confident that your team will be putting up one hell of a fight.
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