Los Angeles Clippers

Clearing Up the Western Conference Playoff Picture

I always find it amazing that after an entire season, spots in the playoffs and seeding can come down to the final few games. This year in the Western Conference it is no different. The east has been settled for over a week and there is only limited jockeying for position. But the west is deeper and ... More >>

The Rockets Are Back In The NBA Playoffs! Their Complete Rebuilding Anthology

With four games to go in the 2011-2012 season, the Rockets were coming off a 117-110 loss to Dallas, a loss in which Dirk Nowitzki provided a stark reminder to last season's Rockets team that they were devoid of a superstar caliber player by dropping 21 points on them in the fourth quarter. To call ... More >>

No Beard? No Problem. Rockets Beat Clippers for 40th W of the Season

At the beginning of this season, I was talking to my friend David Hardisty over at ClutchFans.net. At the beginning of every season, we'll usually talk about what we expect from the season. The team had just traded for James Harden, but neither of us were optimistic. I pegged the Rockets' win total ... More >>

Top Five Things to Do in Houston Sports This Weekend: SHO, Astros and Croquet?

Hey, boys and girls, it's the weekend again. I bet you didn't think you'd make it here from Monday, did you? We assume the next few days are all filled up with plans for antiquing, buying groceries, working in the garden, eating sensibly and going to church for Easter. HA HA HA! We're kidding. But ... More >>

Oh, You Mean There Is Actually A Game During NBA All-Star Weekend? (Plus, Can You Name The Rappers In Our Courtside Photo?)

After a weekend of human gridlock at the Galleria, traffic snarls, bottles poppin', and all the parties you could handle, NBA All-Star Weekend in Houston came to a close on Sunday with the Western Conference defeating their Eastern foes 143-138, the Los Angeles Clippers' Chris Paul getting the game' ... More >>

Rockets Confounding Season of Ups and Downs Continues with a 45-Point Win in Utah

For all their inconsistency this season, there is a certain amount of relative consistency to the Rockets season. Whenever they lose a few, they come back and win a few, or vice versa. The league's youngest team will struggle to shoot with any consistency and turn the ball over like playground balle ... More >>

Beat LA: Rockets Take Out Injury-Riddled Lakers to Run Streak to Five

The Rockets faced a depleted Lakers squad missing three key players including Pau Gasol and Dwight Howard Tuesday night at Toyota Center in a classic trap game. The first game of yet another five-games-in-four-nights stretch for the Rockets against a very short-handed team makes for situation Coach ... More >>

NBA Season Jump Starts with Spate of Christmas Day Games Including the Rockets

In 2011, Christmas Day was the literal start to the NBA season thanks to a lockout that kept the season from starting for nearly two full months. Most every other year, the season starts in October, but for the casual fan, it doesn't really get going until Christmas Day. With the NFL taking the day ... More >>

NBA Finals: Series Prediction and a Few Prop Bets

Finally, it's here! If you had allowed David Stern to sit in a room with all 16 playoff teams on the wall by conference, and allow him to pick his dream matchup for the NBA Finals, it's without a doubt the Miami-Oklahoma City matchup we're getting here. LeBron versus Durant, big market versus small ... More >>

NBA Draft: Recent Stinkhole History To Enlighten Rocket Fans

Prior to Wednesday night's game between the Miami Heat and the Boston Celtics, the 27th annual NBA Draft Lottery took place, or as Rocket fans like to call it "a tradition like no other." For those Rocket fans, their 0.5 percent chance of coming away with the top pick gave the draft lottery a decide ... More >>

Jerry "The King" Lawler Piledrives Clipper Fan: Old School WWE Wrestlers for Each NBA Playoff Series (w/ VIDEO)

People laugh dismissively when I say it, but the more they can incorporate WWE performers and the general WWE "way" of entertainment, the more enjoyable other genres of sports will become. No, I'm not talking about the predetermined outcomes of matches (The NBA has already incorporated that aspect o ... More >>

Rap Round Table: Who's Going to Win the NBA Finals?

Some rappers happen to be thoughtful, intelligent people. Each week, Rocks Off will have some of them here discussing issues relevant to their culture. This Week's Panel: Bun B, Slim Thug, hasHBrown, Chane, Yung Truth, Preemo, Chuckway, Mac, Nosaprise, D-Risha Not Invited: Amar'e Stoudemire's brai ... More >>

Comparing the Rockets Starting Lineup to the Best in the West

The Rockets are mired in a five-game losing streak and slumping their way towards the NBA trade deadline next week. They lost two overtime heartbreakers to the Clippers and the Celtics and dropped an uninspired road loss the the abysmal Toronto Raptors. The Rockets aren't exactly free-falling, but t ... More >>

Bet on the Rockets

What will the second half bring?

Say What You Will About the Rockets, At Least They Aren't The Clippers

We all learned yesterday that the Rockets have fallen to the bottom of the heap when it comes to local television ratings, worse than all but three woeful NBA franchises despite having a winning record now halfway through this lockout-shortened season. In fact, their ratings dropped a whopping 40 p ... More >>

Houston Rockets Second-Half Preview in Gambling-Speak

The Rockets kick off the second half of the 2011-2012 season tonight. I'm not sure how many of you care about this. The acres of empty seats at Toyota Center lead me to believe that fewer of you care than Kevin McHale, Daryl Morey and Leslie Alexander would have hoped for. Television ratings indicat ... More >>

One Man's NBA All-Star Reserve Selections

Go ahead and chalk up the NBA All-Star Game taking place in a few weeks (Sunday, February 26, to be exact) in Orlando's Amway Center as the next "feels weird" moment of the NBA season. It feels like the season just tipped off a few weeks ago and yet here we are, about 20 games in, deciding who the b ... More >>

Tale of the Tape: LeBron James's Alley-Oop vs Blake Griffin's Facial (w/ VIDEO)

I wake up at about 4:15 a.m. each weekday morning to head to the studio and do my radio show on 1560 The Game (also, shameless plug, simulcast on television on Comcast 129), so many nights I go to bed before the sports world has shut it down for the evening. My tool to catch up on things when I wak ... More >>

NBA Purgatory

Neither the best nor the worst, the Rockets remain stuck in professional basketball's great midsection.

NBA Season Win Totals and My Rockets Prediction

Bet the over on wins​Last add on my post from yesterday about Kris Kardashian Humphries re-signing with the Nets: For those of you who think I was a little too hard on Big Humph (and by my count, there were exactly none of you who felt that way), just know that according to results of a rece ... More >>

2011 NBA Draft -- 4 Winners, 4 Losers

Tough night for Dick Vitale​My fingers are still recovering from the lengthy (eight printed pages!) live blog I did last night here on Hair Balls, but the day after the draft necessitates some post-draft analysis. I've now had a day to sleep on it, and without further ado, a few post-draft tho ... More >>

Kevin McHale Is The Rockets New Head Coach

Do not read the subhed​In what would have been classified as a fairly startling upset at the beginning of the search process, the Houston Rockets have chosen former Boston Celtic great/Minnesota Timberwolves coach and general manager Kevin McHale as the next head coach of their franchise. In ... More >>

The NBA's Top-Selling Jerseys List (And Seven Things It Tells Us)

NBA jerseys: We CAN just all get along!!​I'll admit, I don't own any sports jerseys. I'm not a jersey-wearing guy, partially because the fit and feel of an authentic professional sports shirt are not optimal, but mostly because I'm over the age of 14. Full disclosure, I don't buy many jersey ... More >>

Houston Rockets -- Chuck Hayes Needs To Ease Up

Chuck Hayes, ripping off the dunk-seeking consumer​"He is as good as any defender in this league in the low post. I'm going to start talking to the coaches at the end of the year when they have the (All-NBA) defensive team. If he's not on one of the defensive teams, there's something wrong. . ... More >>

NBA 2010-2011 Preview -- Reconstructing LeBron

Please, no more operations on Yao Ming​"What should I do?" -- LeBron James, over and over and over again his new Nike spot The fact that LeBron James is posing the question in his new Nike spot perhaps tells us that he is not completely devoid of self-awareness, as he appeared to be last summer. ... More >>

Game Time: LeBron James: The Decision -- You Suck, ESPN

LeBron is Cleveland's new "Cuyahoga River on fire"​"It's been a real humbling experience to be in this position." -- LeBron James on his self-requested, one hour made-for-LeBron TV special on ESPNIf you lived in Houston at the time, you remember September 13, 2008. That was the morning after Hurr ... More >>

GAME TIME: NBA Draft: 8 Winners and 8 Losers

As in most things in life, Calipari is both a winner and loser​"Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the 2010 NBA Draft..." -- David SternI'm not going to lie, those words give me a tingly feeling every year that I hear them. It never gets old -- like reruns of The Sopanos or seeing that Bree Ol ... More >>

Game Time: NBA DRAFT -- Worst Lottery Picks Of The Last 15 Years

cutline​As "must see" events on the sporting calendar go, the annual NBA Draft is highly underrated. If you ask the average sports fan his or her five most watchable sports nights of the year you'll probably get canned answers like the Super Bowl, a Game 7 in the MLB or NBA playoffs, and any inte ... More >>

Game Time: Ken Griffey, Jr.: Baseball's Tracy McGrady?

Not as good as Tom Gordon. Who?​I'm not sure if the back-burnering of Ken Griffey, Jr.'s sudden retirement yesterday speaks more to the magnitude of the Jim Joyce/Armando Galarraga aborted perfect game fiasco or just how far the perception of Griffey as a sure-fire lock of a future Hall of Famer h ... More >>

Game Time: For Sale -- NBA Two Guard, 30 Y/O, Excellent Condition, Trades Accepted

​First, I want to thank everyone for their reaction, positive or otherwise, to my post yesterday which chronicled the high points of the era of Tracy McGrady's Expiring Contract I seem to learn something with every new post that I generate here on Hair Balls, and yesterday I learned that there are ... More >>

Game Time: Woke Up This Morning, Got Myself LeBron

​Those of you who listen to my show know that I am fond of placing the "occasional" friendly wager. While handicapping the day-to-day and week-to-week ebb and flow of a football, basketball, or (if you're really sick) baseball season can be enjoyable and, at times, lucrative (especially when betti ... More >>

Houston Rockets: This Needs To Be Yao's Team

Coming off a 2-3 road trip, plus wins over OKC and the Hornets, the Rockets make me feel the same way I did a few weeks back. Good, not great. They convincingly won the games they should have, home or away (Clippers, Thunder, Suns), and lost the games they should have (Lakers and a pretty dece ... More >>

Whole Offense, Hole Defense: The Houston Rockets Preview

The Five Worst Basketball Movies of All Time

Jason Friedman's NBA Predictions: Mavs Beat the Jazz, the Suns, the Rockets and the Pistons, Take the Championship in '08

Rocket-hater or Realist?

Posterizing EA

NBA 2K7 towers over the competition.

Chillin' with tha Eskimoz

We have a Whatachat with the guys behind the fast-food rap video

Fire in the Belly

Rice's new basketball director reveals the secret of his fall from NBA stardom

This Week's Day-by-Day Picks

Clang!

Rookie director fires up a ton of bricks in Love & Basketball

Wanna Buy a RoboDome?

The city's sports tycoons maneuver for inside position, and the questions mount: Who needs it? Why? At what cost?