I’ll admit I’m only a fair-weather fan, but I’ve been watching the last few games.
The Houston Rockets are en feugo, baby! So much fun to watch them win like this.
I barely know the players names ('cept for T-Mac), but this is fun!
That was one of the most exciting regular season games I’ve seen in a while. A 22-game winning streak is so amazing in the NBA - it’s more than a quarter of the season! And for them to win today with McGrady so clearly tired and sluggish was very impressive, even if they got a very lucky break with the Lakers losing Gasol.
The point guard, Rafer “Skip 2 My Lou” Alston was crazy today, and one of my favorite players, Shane Battier, was excellent. I’ve never had any particular affection for Houston, but I liked the way they kept their intensity up high even after the game was decided. I could see they enjoyed playing that hard and playing that well.
Yeah, I was impressed that they kept up the strong defense with only 30 seconds left in the game. And Alston had 30 points, I think, with EIGHT three-pointers!
I really don’t pay attention to the NBA and when I heard they had lost Yao for the season I figured they were done. And now I’m hearing about this streak every day thanks to ESPN. So congrats to the Rockets. That’s an impressive streak in any sport.
The Denver Nuggets have scored over 300 points in their last two games (Denver 168, Seattle 116 tonight) and are 14 games over .500 and at this point won’t even make the playoffs. The Western Conference is just scary.
Ewing effect, maybe?
Didn’t the first 15 or so wins in the streak come with Yao in the lineup?
You know, I was one of those ones that wrote off the Rockets. I still think they’re going to get clobbered in the playoffs, but a case of the back spasms (which Tracy McGrady does get annually) will put some damper to this.
…Unless we’re working with the Ewing Theory. Then…well…only a high-powered sniper rifle will stop it.
The first 12 did, the latest 10 did not.
Wasn’t this getting renamed the “Tiki Barber Theory”?
It’s going to end up as the Yao theory if the Rockets keep it up. But I thought all those names/theories were dumb anyhow.
The problem is that the “Ewing Theory” isn’t a theory: there’s nothing that explains why this happens, or predicts when it will happen. So it’s really a “Ewing Effect” or “Ewing Phenomenon” Which of course is not very euphonious, as Howard Cosell would have said.
I don’t know, does “The Tiki Effect” or “Ming Phenomenon”* roll off the tongue better?
[/Mini rant]
- Provisionally observed. Requires more extensive confirmation.
:: crossing my fingers for tonight ::
I haven’t kept up with the Rockets since Olajuwon left (well, I watched Sir Charles a little). Maybe I’ll check 'em out again.
Yes there is.
I will cop to being one of those who thought they were finito as far as coming out of the West when they lost Yao. I was loud wrong. I still think it is pretty unlikely - but they aren’t “done” like I thought. Its not impossible.
And this streak is special.
To me, the streak is an anamoly- many teams have won 19 or 20 of 22 and with a break could have won 22 straight. Portland won 13 straight earlier this season and 19 of 21 and won’t even make the playoffs. Hoston could end up 62-20 and wouldn’t be favored over San Antonio, Phoenix or LA in a seven game series, not with a starting lineup of Battier, Alston, Scola, Mutombo and McGrady- four role players and one superstar is not a great team.
It’s like flipping a coin and getting heads 22 times in a row, basically- each game is a toss-up and they won all 22 tossups. I compare it to the Seattle Mariners winning 116 regular season games a few years back and then losing in the first round of the playoffs- this is an average team whose hit an unbelivable streak of luck, and they’ll moan no one is giving them respect and wont make the conference finals, guaranteed 
.
A lot of the cited examples are pretty lame. Two that stood out are Don Mattingly leaving the Yankees in 1995 and then winning the Series in 1996 (Mattingly was long past his prime and was replaced by a player who everyone knew at the time was more valuable) and the “Red Sox were in first place after five weeks into the season!” thing about 2001. The Red Sox missed the playoffs by 13 games that year and just barely made it past .500. Who cares how they were doing in the first week of May?
The theory is nonsense unless it can be used to predict future events with some degree of reliability that exceeds random chance.
The loss of Yao Ming Is a blow to the Rockets, but they were obviously a very good team and if you just look at how they’ve done in ten games without him, it’s not exactly a miracle for a team to win ten straight games. Winning 22 straight games is pretty amazing, but obviously for the purposes of seeing how they do without Yao, only the last ten count. You can’t say they’re doing BETTER without him, because prior to this they’d won twelve in a row WITH him.
There’s definitely luck involved here, like the Lakers losing Gasol, but they’ve also been consistently better than their opponents. They’ve won something like 18 of these games by 10 points or more. And it’s not like they’ve been healthy and all their opponents have been hurt! It’s true that lots of teams come close to streaks like this. Everybody has an off night against the wrong team sooner or later or gets caught after back-to-back games or something. But Houston is winning anyway. Luck might turn a 19-3 run into a 22-0 streak, but you’ve got a team playing excellent ball either way.
Oh they’re definitely playing well- you don’t win ten in a row by complete luck, let alone 22. I see it as the perfect one-in-a-million alignment- team on a roll playing very well at atime when they are playing an easy portion of their schedule, and the tough games are vs. teams missing key talent- Gasol, Dirk, etc. But once the playoffs start, on sheer talent, I’d say they’ll be about 10th in rankings of teams to win the title, epesically if they’ve lost a few in a row. And while they could in theory still miss the playoffs entirely (unlikely), its not unheard of that they could lose home court advantage- which incidentally they had vs. Utah last year, and Utah has gotten better. But hey, not trying to be negative, congrats to them, luck or not, its something only one other team has done, ever.