I'm one for stats and interesting patterns in data. Not to the extent Morey is by any means, but I run my own businesses and thus have a lot of time to indulge in my hobbies, namely the Houston Rockets. The biggest thing is actually that I live in Dallas and don't have cable, and the NBA League Pass blacks out Rockets games. This leaves me to watch box scores and make assumptions based on the data I'm reading; this is why game recaps are so important to me.

That babble on my background aside, I noticed something today. Along with San Antonio, we are the only teams that have defeated the Thunder twice this year. That's impressive, considering that we are probably the closest anyone was to actually defeating them three times this season. Combined with SA, we account for 33% of their losses. It's not as though we were playing an injury-depleted Thunder either, yet even on this last successful outing we were missing arguably our two most important players (despite my extreme disregard of Martin).

I know the Thunder are a young and dangerous team, but with at least Lowry back- what keeps us from being the Memphis Grizzlies of last years playoffs (and I mean that from the sense of pushing it to game 7 in the second round, not by losing to the Thunder). As a team, while the Rockets have undoubtably has their lows with starting the season 3-7 and a couple of lackluster losing streaks, I think that this team is even better than what most think and that will shine if we make it to the post season. Imagine if we had Adelman, the team was comfortable with the system and we went 5-5 to start? Couple that with, say 2-3 more wins plucked out of any of the losing streaks we've had (namely close losses against Boston and Clippers come to mind immediately, or Toronto or Cleveland if you want the "gimme" wins) and we're sitting at 30-17. Is that stretching it? Maybe, but I don't think it's overachieving.