The Houston Rockets Are Doomed

We—most of us, anyway—are doing our best to achieve whatever we're trying to achieve; some of us can feel good, when the aggravation and madness of sentience quiets down for a spell, about where we are. But almost as soon as peace arrives, restlessness sets in again. We're after satisfaction with a butterfly net, and whenever we think we might have caught it, the damn thing slips through a hole in the mesh and flutters away. We suffer through minor and major existential crises until we are able to coax ourselves up off our asses with what are, if we're being honest, probably lies. We can do this. Anything is possible.

Yet we know on some level that getting where we want to go is unrealistic. Maybe we are not talented enough; maybe the game is rigged. The pursuit itself, which is exhausting, but also something to which we can apply ourselves and find occasional joy in, is likely something we will die in the midst of. This is getting heavy, but I should probably clarify that this is all in reference to what has been one of the best teams in the NBA this season.

The Houston Rockets are doomed. This is a strange state for a typical Western Conference three-seed, but for all the winning that got them this far, the Rockets have a mere also-ran's chance at winning a title this season. They're banged up and underpowered, too thin and discombobulated to put together the string of excellence that would be required to survive the Western Conference postseason thunderdome. A robust win-loss record reveals one thing; seeing what a team must to do assemble that record reveals another. The difficulty with which the Rockets win—despite the fact that they win prodigiously—gives the impression that they're not destined for anything more glorious than a second-round playoff exit.

If that prediction turns out to be wrong, it will be because the imperious verve James Harden has exhibited throughout the regular season somehow ascends yet another level. Harden's MVP case is bolstered by the fact that the team he has dragged to prominence would, without him, likely be deep in lotteryville. A contender that starts Trevor Ariza in a non-contract year is no contender at all. Relying upon the suddenly washed up Josh Smith is similarly worrisome. Donatas Motiejunas is a nice player, but when he's the second-best scorer on the floor for extended periods of time, there is a problem. Harden has made the Rockets what they are on offense through his genius and relentlessness, but it's been an unpretty grind. It's a testament to Harden's offseason conditioning work that, after 73 back-breaking games, he's still going strong to the basket, being whacked and slapped and getting up unfazed.

Harden has done all this impressive work mostly without Dwight Howard, who was supposed to be Harden's counterpoint and co-star. This is something to take into account when figuring what degree of promise the rest of the Rockets' season holds, but even with Howard easing back into games, players do not sit out for two months, return in late March, and get themselves completely right for a postseason run as a general rule. A rusty and perhaps-not-fully-healed Howard is better than what the Rockets were rolling with in his place, but Dwight almost definitely isn't ready to be the second star his team needs him to be. Whether, at age 29, with a bad back and ailing legs, he might be at the precipice of a sharp decline is an altogether more troubling notion.

The Rockets found out on Monday that Patrick Beverley is out for the year with a wrist injury. In terms of statistical production, this wouldn't appear to be the biggest deal, but Beverley is the sort of player who helps the Rockets make sense. He could defend the other team's best perimeter defender, unburdening Harden; perhaps even more crucially, he filled minutes that will now be given to Jason Terry and Pablo Prigioni, a pair of pretty-much-utterly-spent guards in their late 30s. Houston's backcourt rotation, save Harden, is funereally bleak.

If there is an upside to all this—and really, there is not—it's that the famously bleep-bloop-robotic-seeming Rockets are suddenly as relatable as they have ever been. A team that performs like a balling-out-of-control mathlete collective is now suffering the sort of adversity that numbers can't account for, and the beating is humanizing them. Daryl Morey, as ever, is pretty good at his job, but Dork Elvis's squad is biting reality's curb this year. On paper, at least, the Rockets had a decent shot to make it through the Western Conference. Even that is gone, now, which leaves Houston headed into the postseason fragile and overmatched, and almost entirely dependent upon a bearded savant who can only do so much to alter their fortunes. No one has done much wrong, and it's all going to turn out not-okay anyway. The Rockets are people, too, as it turns out.