With an easier schedule on paper, the Rockets must secure crucial wins to climb the standings and fight for home-court advantage in the playoffs.
Following the brutal overtime loss to Minnesota last night, previously reviewed on Roundtable, the Rockets set themselves back in the standings. They’re now a whole game and a half behind the Wolves and two games behind Denver.
This makes the second to last game of the season more likely to be a very important one, as it’ll settle the season series against the Minnesota Timberwolves.
Depending on how the standings look in a couple of weeks, that game could decide the 4-6 seeds in the Western Conference. Houston would have to climb up two and a half games now, due to them losing the season series versus the Nuggets.
The Rockets only have 10 games left this season to close that gap, and it’d be extremely helpful to get home court advantage considering their 18-19 record away from home. Something that’s been a problem all season, as we’ve discussed on Roundtable.
One positive for Ime Udoka and his team is that Tankathon shows them having the fourth “easiest” schedule remaining. Denver and Minnesota have the 10th and 14th most difficult schedules, with eight and name games left.
More difficult schedules with less games to extend their advantage in the standings. But this doesn’t necessarily guarantee Houston will climb into 4th or even 5th place. They need to win games regardless of what other teams do.
They’ve started their four game road trip with two disheartening losses, with Memphis and New Orleans next up. Two games fans would like to expect to result in victories, but after the loss to the Bulls on Monday, that’s hard to do.
These organizations without any offseason aspirations seemingly love to kill the vibes of playoff teams at this point of the season. Memphis just beat Denver last Wednesday, greatly finishing the Nugget’s chances of ending in third place.
New Orleans already had a comeback for the ages, embarrassing the Rockets earlier in the season, as covered on Roundtable. I’m sure they’d love to play spoiler again on Sunday. The same goes for the Bucks and Jazz, who come to town on April 1st and 3rd.
The Warriors and Suns will host Houston on their final road trip for games on the 5th and 7th. It’s tough to tell if either team will be playing for seeding by this point, and they could essentially just forfeit the match.
A three game homestand to finish the regular season will start on April 9th with the Philadelphia 76ers coming for their only game at the Toyota Center this year.
The very next night is that Timberwolves matchup that has potential to be a monumental game in terms of standings. It doesn’t help that it comes on the second night of a back to back.
The last game on the schedule comes on Sunday, April 12th against the Memphis Grizzlies again. We’ll see how important that game is for playoff matchups when that time comes.