Houston Rockets (33-24)
There’s no question that the Houston Rockets had a rough start to their season, and a big reason why is due to losing a couple of their rotation pieces in the off-season and fighting through the injury bug. Both Chris Paul and James Harden missed multiple games early on this season, and the team is still trying to calibrate itself.
With that said, they’ve been much better as of late and are currently 4th in the Western Conference standings at the NBA All-Star break. They are just four games out of the 3rd seed, but at this point it’s likely not feasible for them to make up that many games with only 20-some odd games remaining in the regular season.
The Rockets will likely finish as the 4th or 5th seed, and are probably looking at a second-round playoff series against the Warriors (if they manage to make it out of the first-round). That won’t be easy.
Grade: B-