Coming into the season, the Houston Rockets were a sexy pick to contend for the Western Conference crown and furthermore, contend for the NBA championship.
Now, they have started the season 4-7 and they are currently on a four game losing streak with some alarming defensive statistics to go along with it.
The Rockets players decided enough was enough and they elected to sit down and talk amongst themselves. This marks the second team this season to have a players-only meeting, following in the footsteps of the Sacramento Kings.
Following from ESPN’s Calvin Watkins.
The Houston Rockets, in the midst of their longest losing streak since 2013, held a players-only meeting on Tuesday morning at the Toyota Center.
While certain details of the meeting weren’t revealed, communication and clearing the air were among the talking points.
“What happens in the room, stays in the room,” center Dwight Howard said following practice. “It was good for us to sit down and talk, but it’s a long season and you can’t get caught up in losing a couple of games and getting upset and so frustrated and feel like it’s the end of the world. It is embarrassing. We hate to lose but at the same time we have a long season and we can’t think negative when we lose. We have to try and find the positive in any situation. You keep thinking negative, then negative things will continue to happen to you. You got to stay positive and fight through it. All this stuff will build our character.”
We brought everything up in the meeting, everything turned out well,” Lawson said. “We got open feelings and communication. I feel like we’re on the same page now.”
“It was a good talk for us,” Harden said. “We hadn’t had an opportunity to communicate like that since the season had been going. It was good for us to communicate and each guy basically said what their role was and every single night they’re going to contribute to that role. After the talk we had a really good practice, guys communicated, we worked hard and now it’s about carrying it over. It’s about doing it on the floor.”
The Rockets opened the season by going 0-3 but it looked like it all came back to Houston when they went on a four-game winning streak, which included consecutive California road wins over the Sacramento Kings and Los Angeles Clippers. Once again, the Rockets find themselves in another losing streak having lost their past four games, and failed to reach 100 points in each. Not to mention, they have yet to hold an opponent to under 100 points.
Houston is averaging 20 fewer points in their losses. The Rockets recent losing streak has been troubling. They lost to a then-winless Brooklyn Nets team and a short-handed Dallas team. For the second time this season season, they lost to the Denver and a 110-95 defeat to Boston on Monday was the icing on the cake, especially considering that the Celtics were playing their fifth game in seven days when they beat the Rockets.
Rockets star James Harden has seen his scoring average drop from 38.5 points per game in victories to 20.9 in losses and he’s also shooting 46.4 percent from the field in wins, and 30.2 percent in losses. That’s not great stuff from a man who said he was the MVP last season.
Whatever is wrong with Houston, whether it’s Ty Lawson, Dwight Howard, James Harden’s scoring, has to be figured out fast. There’s no room to fall behind in the Western Conference especially when the top team in the West is 11-0 and they’re out to prove that their NBA Championship run last year wasn’t a fluke.
