As many of you may experienced yesterday (Sunday), this site was down for several hours. We made some phone calls to the hosting provider, and it turned out a lot of their servers were down for all their customers’ sites, not just this one. I found it ironic that one day after many of the Rocket players failed to show up for Game 7, our hosting provider had a similar failure.

Now that it has been a couple of days since the Rockets lost to the Mavericks in Game 7 on Saturday night, I thought now was a good time to reflect on the abrupt ending of the Rockets’ season.

First, I like what someone wrote about how it was a shame any team had to lose this series because the Rockets and Mavericks were both so good, this series was worthy of being a Western Conference championship playoff series. They were two of the best teams in the league by the end of the season, with Houston winning 7 in a row and the Mavericks having won nine straight.

As a result, I believe a first round loss in this series can’t be considered like a “normal” first round loss. All this talk about T-Mac being a loser of five first round playoff series’ is bunk. This series was much tougher than previous round one losses for McGrady. All you have to do is look at the Seattle Supersonics and how overmatched they are against the San Antonio Spurs. That series is a joke, as evidenced in Game 1 of that series on Sunday night when the Sonics were getting blown out in the first half even before Ray Allen and Vladimir Radmanovic got hurt with sprained ankles.

You know there’s a problem when it was in the Rockets’ best interest at the end of the season to lose some games so they could have played Seattle in the opening series rather than Dallas. But of course, that’s something no team should ever do. But the way the NBA is now aligned and how they award playoff seeds, it definitely creates more of an incentive to tank some games.

As you may already know, the NBA realigned itself to have three divisions in each Conference after the league awarded Charlotte a franchise, rounding out the number of teams in the NBA to 30. The realignment created 15 teams in each conference, thus allowing them to create 3 divisions in each conference, with each division having 5 teams each.

The problem was that the rules suddenly changed so that the winner of each division was awarded one of the top three seeds in the playoff rankings. Therefore, a weak team that ended up winning their division got a higher seed compared to stronger teams in other divisions who finished with better won-loss records. That seems to happen in the NFL and Major League Baseball all the time, and I don’t think that’s right.

So if you look at the records this past season of all the teams in the Western Conference, ranked them by record, and awarded the two top seeds to the old Midwest and Pacific division winners, the first round playoff pairings would have been much different. Here’s how the Western Conference playoff seedings would have ended up:

1) Phoenix (62-20, winner of Pacific)
2) San Antonio (59-23, winner of Midwest)
3) Dallas (58-24)
4) Seattle (52-30) (they would not be seeded third, but fourth)
5) Houston (51-31)
6) Sacramento (50-32)
7) Denver (49-33)
8) Memphis (45-37)

With these seeds, here’s how the first round match-ups would have shaken out:

Phoenix – Memphis (same as what occurred this year)
San Antonio – Denver (same)
Dallas – Sacramento (different)
Seattle – Houston (different)

So as you can see, Dallas would have faced Sacramento, and if Dallas had lost their series against Houston, you can sure bet Mark Cuban and Maverick fans would be saying the way playoff seeds are awarded these days is screwy. I’m sure they would have wanted to face Sacramento instead of Houston.

And of course, Houston would have faced Seattle instead of Dallas. Seattle is good, but they aren’t that good, and the Rockets would probably be playing Phoenix in the second round right now (another team they could have beaten).

I know some people will argue that a winner of a division should be awarded one of the top three seeds in the playoffs, but if you ask most basketball fans what teams are in each division, they probably couldn’t tell you. Rewarding division champions with higher seeds is not fair to other teams in more competitive divisions that deserve to be placed higher in the playoff rankings. I like the idea of putting all of the teams in each conference in a big bucket like in previous years, and awarding the top seeds to two division champions, not three.

Jon and Scott

I had said before Game 7 that if Jon Barry didn’t have a good game from the outside, then we would need a big game from Scott Padgett. Well, Jon struggled, shooting 1-for-6, scoring only two points (in garbage time), and missing all four of his three pointers.

Unfortunately, Padgett couldn’t pick up the slack either. He also shot 1-for-6, made only 1-of-3 three-pointers, and scored only three points. I knew they were going to need him if Barry struggled, and it didn’t happen. Of course, we can’t put the entire blame on Padgett. Everybody else other than Yao and T-Mac struggled: Mike James, David Wesley and Bob Sura combined for 11 points.

Juwan

The loss of Juwan Howard in the Rockets-Maverick playoff series cannot be overstated. I watched a tape of Game 7 again, and the Rockets were really hurt on the boards by not having a power forward who could help Yao down low in grabbing rebounds and blocking shots. It was ridiculous how overmatched they were.

Injuries and illnesses are a part of the game, and this season, the Rockets got unlucky by having such a key player be out of action. So I’m not too down on the Rockets. They couldn’t control Juwan’s health. I just don’t want to hear any Dallas fans talking smack since he would have made a big difference.

More bad calls:

As I reviewed the tape of Game 7, I saw more bad calls/no-calls in the first half. For example, Scott Padgett clearly blocked Dirk Nowitzki without contact, but was whistled for a foul. T-Mac was hit in the face as he put up a shot near the rim, and no foul was called. T-Mac was so incensed that no foul was called, he got called for a technical on the play. And later, T-Mac was fouled on a jumper where it looked liked he had shot an air ball, but the replays clearly showed he was hit on the wrist. Although the Rockets were down when these plays occurred, it made it that much harder for them to come back. Idiot refs.

In closing, I just have to bring more attention to the following photo.

If you don’t know what this photo is all about, go to the May 2nd game coverage. It’s too painful to describe once again.

People say the Rockets weren’t as athletic as the Mavericks and the Mavericks deserved to win. So why should we even complain about the officiating, they ask. My answer is the following: if you’re going to look at teams on paper or just look at how they play during the a stretch of games, then let’s not even keep score or even have playoffs. Let’s just award the championship based on who we think should win. Maybe we should have a poll on who should win the championship, then award it right after the poll closes. Kind of like American Idol. Of course, I’m being sarcastic. If Game 5 had been called correctly, the Rockets might be in Phoenix right now preparing for Game 1.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 9th, 2005 at 12:22 am and is filed under Rockets' off-season. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.