The Rockets are seemingly walking into the NBA Western Conference playoffs with ease.
No worries about a late playoff push, play-in possibilities or seedings. After a four-year postseason drought, the Rockets are back in the playoffs and for weeks now we’ve known they will be the No.2 seed in the West.
The Rockets’ young core of Jalen Green, Amen Thompson, Jabari Smith, Jr., Tari Eason and Alperen Sengun has endured a lot of losing, and now they are at the threshold to elite, ready to kick in the door to the playoffs together for the first time.
Last year, the Rockets narrowly missed the playoffs, so the excitement level for the players and city is on 10.
“I’m sure it’s pretty high for guys who haven’t been there,” said second-year Rockets coach Ime Udoka, who guided the Boston Celtics to the NBA Finals a few years back in his one-and-only season at the helm. “For myself and some of the vets that are there yearly, it was different last year for us. But for the guys who haven’t done it, which is the majority of our young guys, this has got to be an exciting time.”
But here is the tricky part. An experienced team with many playoff wins will likely come into Toyota Center this weekend to face the Rockets in the first round of the Western Conference playoffs. The final game day of the regular season finale saw only the top three seeds locked up, with Oklahoma City, the Rockets and the Los Angeles Lakers holding those spots.
Slots four to 10 were still up for grabs, with an ill-timed loss possibly throwing recent NBA champions Denver and Golden State into the play-in round along with playoff-proven teams like Minnesota, Memphis, and the Los Angeles Clippers. The Rockets will draw the winner of the Memphis-Golden State play-in game in the first round of the playoffs, which begin April 21 at Toyota Center.
A first-round matchup against the Golden State Warriors and playoff-Steph Curry is a tough ask for any NBA team, let alone a team whose star players have never been in the postseason.
The Rockets have been good this regular season. The playoffs, however, bring a different intensity, and only hardened or mature-beyond-their-years teams survive.
“It’s night and day as far as mentality,” Udoka said.
The good thing for the Rockets is they have proven playoff veterans on the roster like Fred VanVleet, Dillon Brooks, Steven Adams and Jeff Green, who won an NBA title with the Nuggets a couple of years ago. They also have one of the best coaches in the league in Udoka.
But at the end of the day, it will have to be the play of Jalen Green, Smith, Sengun and Thompson that pulls the Rockets through the first round against what will be a difficult opponent.
The hope is that the cushion of taking care of business early, which has allowed Udoka to rest players and play with different lineups, will serve them well against the veteran teams that have had to scratch and claw until the end just to get into a favorable playoff position. Udoka has been able to experiment with his double-big lineup of Sengun and Adams. At the same time, the extended time VanVleet missed because of injury allowed the Rockets to experiment more with Thompson and Jalen Green handling the ball and controlling the offense.
The outstanding March the Rockets had allowed them not to blink while ending the regular season on a three-game losing streak.
“We wanted to handle our business and not have to worry about anybody else or rely on anything else,” Udoka said before the regular-season finale against Denver. “Obviously, the play-in is still a factor but our part is done. It’s given us some time to think about what we want to do as far as resting, finding the right balance. But that was the most important thing to us all year was to handle our own business.”
Interim Denver coach David Adelman couldn’t help but envy the Rockets’ position versus the Nuggets. Just two seasons removed from winning an NBA title with pretty much the same cast, the Nuggets have been inconsistent all season and recently fired their head coach.
Denver needed to win the regular-season finale against the Rockets to secure a top-four seed and avoid backing into the postseason via the play-in tournament. So there was no doubt the Nuggets needed to play all of their starters in the final regular-season game, while Udoka chose to play his starters because they would be off for a week.
“Their roster is so deep and well coached,” said Adelman, who is the son of former Rockets coach Rick Adelman. “Everybody on their roster can really hoop. We knew coming into this game it was going to be tough whether it was their starting five or last five.”
