Pau Gasol

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 >>

Crystal Ball: Looking Ahead to 2013 Houston Sports, Texans/Rockets Edition

It's always an adventure when it comes to being a sports fan in Houston. Fortunes change quickly and the sensitive sports psyche of the city is so damn fragile, our confidence having been shattered so often in the past. Even when we want to swagger into a new year or a new season, it feels uncomfort ... More >>

NBA Draft Cautionary Retro YouTube Video -- Kwame Brown's Draft Night!

The NBA Draft is tonight, and you know what that means -- yes, bad suits, incoherent interviews, lots of Stuart Scott, and tons of upside potential. So basically, one big engrossing train wreck. It used to be a virtual guarantee a few years ago that every pick in the first round would be deemed a " ... More >>

Rockets GM Daryl Morey Meets With The Media To Discuss The Draft (And Mention The Aborted Pau Gasol Trade A Few Times)

While the NBA Playoffs have been rolling toward their exciting conclusion in Miami and Oklahoma City, back here in Houston, the Rockets have been busy trying to figure out how they can somehow come out of the next few months of NBA player activity with a team that at least feels like a threat to mak ... More >>

Five Things for the Rockets to Consider This Offseason

Another offseason is upon us in Houston. While other teams battle it out in the playoffs, Houston Rockets fans are left to wait until next year...again. With three straight lottery seasons and only one second round appearance since 1997, it's no wonder fans are fatigued and want to see things shaken ... More >>

Tough Week: Rockets Go from Sixth Seed to Out of the Playoffs

Remember all the warm, fuzzy feelings last week when the Rockets came home from a 4-0 road trip, knocking on the door of a good seeding in the Western Conference playoffs? It appeared this scrappy, tough team was going to defy odds and make the playoffs with no stars and their entire starting backco ... More >>

Houston Rockets Acquire Marcus Camby And Derek Fisher. Wilford Brimley Next?

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post where I offered up some proposition wagers for the degenerates in the crowd who like to bet on really obscure things. (Yes, I am gazing into the mirror right now.) One of them was "Total Trades Made Before Deadline: OVER/UNDER 1 1/2" At the time, I cautiously took t ... 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?

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 >>

Team Transition: Rockets, Kevin Martin in NBA Purgatory

Tuesday night was the first time in Kevin Martin's career he went scoreless when starting. With an efficient and relatively prolific scorer like Martin, that's not only a rare occurrence, it's downright shocking. While Martin has had his ups and downs this season, the thought that he would see only ... More >>

Linsanity: Little-Known Jeremy Lin Helping Knicks Hurt the Rockets

Daryl Morey's incessant shuffling of second-rate players over the past few seasons, constantly tweaking and tinkering looking for "assets," came to an almost comical head last week when a player the Rockets cut in the offseason to make room for Jonny Flynn, who they acquired from Minnesota, came to ... 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 >>

NBA Purgatory

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

Rape, Scandal, Greed and Cockfighting -- The 2011 Sports Year In Review

2011: Penn State's horrible year​You know how, in the series 24, the way a season unfolds? How just when you think there has been some sort of resolution to the bad guys being bottled up, right then and there a new (often worse) layer is introduced, and ultimately in like Hour 22 Jack Bauer wi ... More >>

Colts 19, Texans 16: The Day The Sports Gods Reminded Houstonians To Know Our Role

Oh, there goes gravity​For months, it seemed as though the Texans were the average Houstonian's sports salvation. Never mind the Astros' status as the worst organization in baseball and a Bud Selig-forced move to the American League after 50 years. Never mind that the Rockets, after cleverly ... More >>

Pau Gasol Thoughts, My Texans Prediction and Other Weekend Best Bets

Pau Gasol: The closest he'll get to Rocket red.​On November 23, the Texans signed quarterback Kellen Clemens to take over third-string duties. On December 4, the Texans signed Jake Delhomme and two days later they cut Clemens. I never thought there would be a less satisfying era for a Houston ... More >>

2011 NBA Draft -- The Live Blog

Keep coming back for the latest​The overwhelming consensus on the 2011 NBA Draft is that it's, by and large, a pretty underwhelming group of players, and it may quite possibly be completely devoid of future All-Stars. So why am I so excited about tonight's festivities? Because of all the thin ... More >>

The Chris Bosh 2010-2011 Experience (in Quotes -- PLAYOFF Addendum)

Chris Bosh is no Never-Nervous Pervis.​"Was I effective today? It's common sense. I think it's evident. I just have to get it where I'm effective. I have to get it where big guys get it. Then, I feel I can start helping out this team more. I'm effective down in the low-post area. That's where ... 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 >>

Randy Moss Gets Traded For Magic Beans

Randy Moss trades Brady for Favre​"I'm still in awe that I'm a part of this organization. I think that he's the kind of coach that can motivate me. He has a proven track record." -- Randy Moss on Bill Belichick the day he was acquired by the Patriots in 2007 Randy Moss and the Patriots were the ... More >>

Game Time: Kobe Bryant: One Down, One To Go (And Neither of Them Are You, LeBron)

You, Senator, are no Michael Jordan​ "I've got one more than Shaq." -- Kobe BryantThe accolades would seem to indicate that respect has not been an issue for Kobe Bryant -- the respect of fans, the respect of his peers, the respect of the media.In his career, Kobe Bryant has been selected to the A ... More >>

Game Time: Road Trip Edition

​At some point, there is an age you reach where climbing into an SUV with three of your buddies to drive a ridiculous distance to a backwater town to watch football, drink beer, fart, and pretend you're 22 again becomes old. I don't know what age that is, I just know I haven't reached it yet.Las ... More >>

Despite Loss, These Aren't Same Old Rockets

Photo by Katharine ShilcuttThe ending was all too familiar, but the ride was so, so different. Sure, history will show another Rockets season concluded without a title, this time on an 89-70 second-round, Game 7 loss to the Lakers on Sunday afternoon at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. And ... More >>

No Matter Game 7 Outcome, These Rockets Have Heart Of Champions

Photo: Jeff BalkeScrapper Chuck HayesThirty-seven million of the Rockets' approximately $70 million payroll sits on the bench in luxury suits instead of basketball uniforms. With Yao Ming and Tracy McGrady sidelined, the Rockets counter the Lakers' top scoring option -- only one of the best players ... More >>

No Yao, No T-Mac, No Problem: Hayes Sets Tone As Rockets Tie Series

Photo byJeff BalkeThe opening to the Rockets' player introductions sounded as unlikely and frightening as the task of defeating the vaunted Lakers without Yao Ming and Tracy McGrady. Somehow, "a 6-foot-6 center out of Kentucky" didn't deliver the same punch and energy as the booming "7-foot-6 ... More >>

Game 3: Early Missed Opportunities Haunt Rockets

The box score to Game 3 shows the second period as the only frame in which the Rockets weren't outscored on Friday night at Toyota Center. But in reality, it proved pivotal in Houston's 108-94 loss, which allowed Los Angeles to take a 2-1 lead in the best-of-seven series. The normally dynamic La ... More >>

Second Round Preview: Lakers Defense May Pose Biggest Threat To Rockets

The Rockets finally got the first-round monkey off their backs  last week, so what did the NBA give them as a reward? Only a second-round date with the prohibitive title favorite Lakers, beginning tonight at 9:30 in Los Angeles. It's a terrifying matchup by nearly every quantifiable metho ... More >>

Whole Offense, Hole Defense: The Houston Rockets Preview

Burning the Midnight Oil with Daryl Morey

Q&A with Daryl Morey: Talking Trades in the No Balls Association

Standing on the Shoulders of Giants: New York’s Super Win Gives Rockets Hope