How a seemingly mediocre Rockets team rallied.
Though the Rockets’ 22 game winning streak, good for the second longest all-time in NBA history, is over, it still sticks in my mind as a great achievement. For a team that started the streak with more losses than wins to win 22 games in a row, flirting momentarily with the top spot in the West, while losing their leading rebounder and renowned very tall Chinese center, Yao Ming, in the middle of it, it takes something extraordinary.
An old Knicks coach, Red Holzman, himself the architect of an 18 game winning streak setting the original record back in ’68, used to say there was just one ball, but on defense everyone could play. The Rockets’ defense is a wonderful thing to watch. They help on assignments, cover from the weak side, double out or switch the pick and roll. No one but McGrady can truly be counted on to make a play, but everyone can help thwart a play.
I’d add another component to the mix besides defense, and that is chemistry. That’s how you win 22 straight. I still can’t get over that streak. No matter how easy their schedule was, for a team to get by 22 straight wins without getting derailed by one bad break, one bad call, one white-hot shooting performance, one injury, or one off-night is absolutely unfathomable.
The Rockets’ winning streak was a shock. But it was no fluke.
It must be kept in historical perspective that the other teams with winning streaks this high include the ’72 Lakers (with Wilt, Jerry West and Gail Goodrich; 33 games), ’71 Bucks (Kareem Abdul Jabbar and Oscar Robertson; 21 games), and then the ’00 Lakers (Kobe and Shaq; 20 games). Each of these teams featured two players who are generally considered in the top 50 greatest NBA players of all time. These plucky Rockets don’t have a single top 50 all-time player. They don’t have a single playoff series win from either of their top two current players (Tracy McGrady and Shane Battier). They don’t have a player who’s ever played on a championship team, and they start a 27-year-old rookie and a 41-year-old center. A few important notes from the streak: 1. They averaged a 12.3 point differential during the streak, 2. There were 7 road games, 3. They beat Dallas (away), Golden State (away), L.A. (for #1 in the West), New Orleans (twice), Cleveland (thrice), Denver, Indiana, Atlanta, Washington, and Portland.
The Rockets had hit 14 straight when Yao Ming hit his physical wall and had to have season-ending surgery. The fairy-tale was over. Critics everywhere announced that the Rockets put up a good fight and had gotten a nice whiff of the playoff race, but that the West was too well-stocked and Yao too good a player for the Rockets to survive, much less compete for the eighth spot. Yet, this wasn’t the end. The Rockets continued their winning ways beating the Mavericks in Dallas, the Lakers, the Hornets, and Cleveland for a third time in the next eight games.
But here’s what is most impressive about the post-Yao phase: this team hit a major snag and kept going, not through residual pixie dust or the regenerative power of fumes. This is almost a second, separate streak, one that involves the level of self-discovery we associate with random teams (Warriors, anyone?) finding a groove and inflicting it upon others. Except in this case, the wins pile up in succession, in a way that should discount the very seriousness of what’s at hand.
But I don’t think we’ll ever be able to discount that, far from lacking in substance, this streak has contained two big turning points that are usually at odds with the tawdriness of endless, endless victory. These are matters of identity, or learning who you are with the crucible blasting all around. This “identity” was what plagued them all season. Broadcasters and sportswriters countrywide labeled the Yao-McGrady experiment over in December with rumors abounding that Tracy would be traded for a new experiment to surface, ideally a point guard one as the 1 and 5 positions were considered the most valuable. Instead, the Rockets tinkered only a little, adding a quick defender in Bobby Jackson who knew Adelman’s motion offense from his Sacremento days and getting rid of Bonzi Wells and Mike James, two players who could create their own shot, but were getting few minutes because of lackadaisical defense and lack of energy.
For a team to pull off two, possibly divergent, versions of this streak, to accept its destiny and then manufacture a new one on the fly without the ticks or pauses that should give it credibility ... you’ll excuse me if this strikes me as almost overpowering in its intensity. There’s nothing trivial about this twice-over transformation, and yet the fairy-tale forcefulness seems to demand some. Only time will tell if this Rockets team is really that endlessly, disgustingly resilient and resourceful. A good testing ground will be the playoffs, but the real grade cannot come until next season with a healthy (and still young) squad.
That the first loss in 50 days came at the hands of the Celtics seems to be a harbinger for the finals. The Celtics, an authentic replication and tribute to the Spurs, have dominated the West and have shown that the recipe of three offensive playmakers, a bench of dedicated role players, and a stingy defense works in the East as well as the West. And rightly, they should truly be the top news story of the season. That being said, the Rockets’ 22 game winning-streak should go down in history for being an identity-induced phenomenon. Instead of living off of Tracy’s incalculable shooting range, or Yao’s beautiful free throws, the Rockets found their identity as a single entity obsessed only with the team’s success.
Just because Troy Murrell (murrell@fas) ’09 can’t calculate Tracy McGrady’s range doesn’t mean it’s incalculable.