Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Rock On
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There's something incredible going on in the NBA right now. In fact, it's been going on for the better part of two months now, but most of us have channel-surfed right by it.
Don't blame the Houston Rockets. They're trying to get your attention. But, you see, it's not easy to get a look from a sports nation obsessed with blockbuster trades and freshly revealed brackets. Twenty-two straight wins? C'mon, I've got an office pool to win. There's nothing more mundane to sports fans than consistency, even consistency at a level this lofty.
The streak, now spanning more than a quarter of the regular season, is even more jaw-dropping in context. For a team in today's NBA facing the doldrums of mid-winter basketball, performing well enough to win every night is a tall order. The January and February box scores are filled with the league's best teams showing a suspect amount of effort and losing to far inferior competition. Throw in the Rockets' residence in the mean streets of the Western Conference, and a win streak spanning multiple lunar cycles seems out of the question.
Most of us thought the Rockets had a nice thing going when they hit an even dozen wins in a row. But victory number 12 came at the cost of Yao Ming, lost for the season with a foot injury. That had to cool Houston off, right? Ten wins later, Houston is showing no signs of slowing down.
The Rockets' latest effort, a 12-point conquest of the Lakers Sunday, emphasized just how unlikely this group's run has been. Sure, Tracy McGrady's al-star credentials speak for themselves, but what about the rest of this crew?
While teams like Boston, the Lakers, Dallas, and Phoenix all made big-name splashes in the trade market in the last 12 months, the Rockets have cobbled together great play from Shane Battier, now showing that his pejorative billing as a "role player" isn't such an insult, and unheralded rookies Carl Landry and Luis Scola. Sunday was a perfect example of Houston's anonymous excellence, as the Rockets were paced by everyone's favorite AND 1 Mixtape Tour alumnus, Rafer Alston, who scored 31 points.
And yet none of this seems to matter.
I dare you to find an NBA expert willing to wager his credibility on picking the Rockets to even win two playoff series, let alone the four they would need to win the title. Houston is now treading in territory that Magic's Lakers, Jordan's Bulls, or Bird's Celtics never sniffed. Has dominance ever flown so far below the radar?
And unfortunately, the Rockets will only make news when they lose, both in the short-term and in the postseason. The coverage of their next loss will dwarf that of any of their next wins, unless they reach the win-streak record of 33, set by the Lakers in 1972. Even worse, Houston is now faced with heading into the playoffs (a place Tracy McGrady hasn't yet tasted victory in, remember) with unenviably high expectations.
Like their real-life namesakes, we'll only care when they crash. Such is the curse of making the extraordinary look so easy.