Rockets at Mavericks Gamethread

So the Rockets head into Dallas, home of universally acclaimed MVP-In-Waiting, American Idol winner, and solution to everything. Luca Doncic. Honestly, he’s a fun player, and his addition, along with DAndre Jorden has turned the Mavericks into a winner. Of course this season has turned most of the Western Conference into a winner, so maybe something different is going on.

There are only four teams with losing records in the Western Conference and the Rockets are one of them. They’re also five games in the loss column behind the West leading Denver Nuggets, and four behind Golden State. That is to say, the West is mostly smeared evenly around fairly similar records, Phoenix excepted.

One possible source of Rockets woes might be something simpler than anyone (including me) was looking for - the Rockets are seemingly always on the road for long stints. After today they’ll have played 25 games, with 15 of those being road games, and most being on road trips, with short dips back into Houston for one game or so.

As of tonight’s game the Rockets will have played 60% of their games on the road, and with 30% of the schedule complete, they’ll have played 37% of all their road games for the year.

Perhaps I’m grasping at straws, but I think we’ll see a better team without so many long roads trips, which the Rockets will basically be concluding.