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00:00Um, the Rockets at the end of the break, uh, went out kind of farting.
00:06They were three and seven in their last 10, but honestly, I love a Duca.
00:12I don't care what he did in Boston.
00:14I'm past all that nonsense.
00:16I don't care who he wants to sleep with.
00:18He's a great coach.
00:20I love that team.
00:21I think they got great young players.
00:23I love Shaboom.
00:24I like Green.
00:25There's so much Thompson.
00:27There's so much to like about him.
00:29I don't even care.
00:30They went three and seven going out.
00:31They're a tough team.
00:33Yeah, no doubt about it, Scott.
00:35They, um, they went out tough at the, like you said, three and seven in their last 10.
00:40But if I were to try to take people kind of inside those 10 games, um, that was about
00:45as tough a stretch of basketball as I've seen a team have to play in terms of the makeup
00:50of the schedule.
00:51They had a four game road trip that included the Cavaliers, the Celtics and the Grizzlies.
00:56They came home for a game against the Nets, then went right back out onto the road for
00:59another four games.
01:01There were multiple back-to-backs built in there, too.
01:03They had some injury issues.
01:05Shang-Goon was out.
01:06You know, Shang-Goon's got a back issue, kind of looks better.
01:08He played in the All-Star game last night, but they've been dealing with some minor injuries
01:11here and there.
01:12Um, I still look at the Rockets as a product of the aggregate of the season and not just
01:17kind of how they sputtered into the All-Star break.
01:19This is a team that has really embraced Eme Udoka's desire for them to play defense.
01:25Um, guys that formerly didn't really play a whole lot of defense play defense now.
01:29Guys like Shang-Goon and Jalen Greene.
01:30And Ahmed Thompson's been the best player on this team.
01:33People got a little glimpse of him in the Futures game if you watched that this weekend.
01:36Um, he's been excellent.
01:37The fourth overall pick in the draft a couple of years ago.
01:40He's really, really good.
01:41It's a good young team and I'm glad they didn't do anything at the trade deadline, to be honest
01:44with you.
01:45Because they've got a ton of young players.
01:46They still have a ton of draft capital and they're positioned perfectly to make a big
01:50move if they want to.
01:51So, I think, I think Udoka, I think the owners, the Fertittas and Raphael Stone, the GM want
01:55to see what this team looks like in a postseason first before they figure out exactly what
02:00it is they may need to go get.
02:02So has there been talk in Houston of KD in the offseason in a deal to get him onto this
02:11team as that, you know, they don't really have that guy, that veteran presence that's
02:18as good as that guy is.
02:21No, yeah, absolutely.
02:22There's been talk of KD here.
02:24The last odds board that came out on KD as to where he'd play next after Phoenix, the
02:28number one team on that, at the top of that list was, was Houston.
02:32And KD's got a little bit of experience with EMA Udoka.
02:35They were in the same building together in Brooklyn when Udoka was an assistant there.
02:40And I think among all those guys that you could look at, you know, Jimmy Butler was
02:43on the board for them for a while.
02:45I think everybody here in Houston kind of soured on him just seeing the way he left
02:49Miami.
02:50He's on Golden State now, so that doesn't really matter.
02:52There's other guys they could potentially go after.
02:54You know, KD is obviously he's one of the greatest scorers of all time, but I think
02:58his style of play, you could still bring him in here and it doesn't completely disrupt
03:02the chemistry or the advancement, the growth of whichever young players are still left
03:08over after that.
03:09Like, I think KD is a guy, for a guy who scores 30 a game, he is definitely a guy who can
03:12blend in and play with others, if you know what I mean.
03:15Yeah.
03:16I mean, if KD came there, he'd automatically drop 25 a game.
03:20I think that there's so much other talent there that it would bring him back a step
03:24or two in terms of the 30 a night.
03:26But I'd love to see it.
03:28When they come out Friday night, they start up, they got the T-Wolves at home, then they
03:34go to Salt Lake, then they're back home for the Bucs and the Spurs.
03:39And that's Tuesday and Wednesday of next week.
03:41So Friday, Saturday, Tuesday, Wednesday.
03:44Those are big games, tough games, except the Jazz game, I think, is easy work for them
03:48at the Delta.
03:50Yeah.
03:51But yet, for this Rockets team, it's been the easy games have been a problem at times
03:56where they really kind of got on everybody's radar within the last few weeks, Scott, was
04:01when they beat, they swept Cleveland in a back-to-back, in a home-and-home, and then
04:05they beat the Celtics.
04:06Granted, the Celtics were down a couple guys, but Jalen Brown and Jason Tatum both played
04:11in that game.
04:12They've actually played very, very well against the good teams in the league this year, if
04:16you look at their record.
04:17At one point, before this little stretch of the 3-7 you were pointing to, about midway
04:22through the season, if you took the teams that were all top 10, we'll call it top 10
04:27teams in the league record-wise, their record against those teams was like 12-4.
04:31They played very well against the good teams.
04:33It's actually kind of a classic young team kind of thing.
04:38They beat those teams, but then they get beat by the Nets twice in five days.
04:42One of them is just, I'm sure you saw it, just an awful-
04:44I did.
04:45They gave up two threes in the last nine seconds of the game.
04:48They still do a lot of young team things, so I don't look at the schedule necessarily
04:53in terms of the opponents and get too worried or upset or excited one way or the other.
04:57To me, it's the flow of the schedule, the back-to-backs, the road trips, and things
05:00like that.