The Disappointment in Houston

It’s happened before. Teams have ramped up their roster in exciting off-seasons, bringing about delusions of grandeur, but when the playoffs finally arrive the said team doesn’t play up to their potential and has an early postseason exit. The 2013-2014 Houston Rockets are the latest team to fall victim to this phenomenon.

After signing center Dwight Howard to team up with James Harden, the Rockets and H-Town were buzzing for the first time in a number of years. Many believed the Rockets to be one of the elite teams in the NBA but fate had other ideas for them.

They finished as the fourth-seed in the tough Western Conference and met-up in the playoffs with a young-and-gun Portland Trailblazer team who, at one point, was the best team in the NBA. Portland quickly took the first two games of the series in Houston, an impressive feat for a young team and the Rockets could never recover. Houston rebounded and took game 3 in Portland but dropped game 4 to the Blazers and after that the Blazers had full control. It wasn’t like the Blazers were destroying the Rockets — most games were very tight and could have gone either way — but they mainly went the Blazers’ way.

So, the Blazers move on to the second round and the Rockets, disappointingly, go home way earlier than most people expected.

It is very clear that Dwight Howard has found a home in Houston with the Rockets and that he enjoys playing second-fiddle to Harden, but are those two enough to get the Rockets over the hump? I don’t believe so.

They need another star-type player to make another big three in the NBA. We all know that Dwight Howard isn’t the best offensive center in the league and James Harden sometimes doesn’t play his best, especially on defense. Having another star to carry them would go a long way toward putting them over the hump.

Next season will be very interesting for the Rockets because even though most people didn’t expect them to compete for a title in the first year together, losing in the first round of the playoffs with home-court advantage isn’t a good sign. For their sake, I hope they use this season as motivation to figure out what ails them. If not, the reputations of both Harden and Howard as true stars in this league are at stake.