Are The Houston Rockets A Great Team?

After the Houston Rockets won their 20th consecutive game on Wednesday against the Atlanta Hawks, ESPN.com ran a poll asking whether the Rockets are a great team.While the results were not surprising (roughly two-thirds of people voted “No”) the fact that the question would even be proposed got me thinking: What makes a team “great?” So often in sports, teams, players or situations are tagged with the term “great” at such a pace that the significance of the word is rendered meaningless. Is it reasonable to call the Rockets a great team?

Well, it is reasonable to argue that the current Rockets squad – with a healthy Yao Ming – didn’t exhibit the potential to be “great.” With the Yao-Tracy McGrady tandem, they were thought to be a potentially very good team, but nothing more.Remember, the core of this team is largely the same as it was last year, when it was eliminated in the first round by the Utah Jazz. Yao and Tracy had been together two previous seasons, failing to get out of the first round in 2005 while missing the playoffs in 2006.

So, again, there were no indications that the 2007-08 Houston Rockets would become a great team. Now, could they display characteristics of a great team? I think they have in this winning streak. Any team can play great for small stretches. The 2007 New York Giants won a Super Bowl by defeating what many people had considered one of the all-time great teams. Were the New England Patriots any less of a great team because they lost the Super Bowl? Perhaps, because they didn’t achieve their most desired goal, but that Super Bowl loss did not diminish what the team had accomplished up to that point.Were the New York Giants a great team because of their late season momentum, capped by thrilling victories against the Green Bay Packers in the NFC Championship game and the Patriots in the Super Bowl? No, they were not a great team in the big picture, but they played as a great team at the tail end of their season.

Another factor that works against the Rockets being a great team is the track record of teams who have steamrolled through the regular season before failing in the playoffs. The 1993-94 Seattle Supersonics and 2006-07 Dallas Mavericks are prime examples of teams who looked great by winning 60-plus regular season, yet failed to take care of business once the stakes were raised.Look, every team that has realistic playoff aspirations, like the current Rockets squad, considers a league championship as the ultimate goal.

It’s understood that the regular season is simply a stepping stone to the playoffs. The regular season is thought of as a way to best position each team to succeed in the playoffs. With that said, a team’s greatness can be very subjective. The Patriots were a great team because of the way they demolished their competition in the regular season. Going unbeaten through a season, while setting several significant individual and team records in the process, has enough of an impact on the history of the game that the team can be considered great.

In basketball, this would be akin to a team winning a prodigious amount of games (think 1971-72 Lakers or 1995-96 Bulls). The Rockets, however, haven’t played great throughout this season. They have played good, and then great, basketball since late-January. That’s a big difference. What the Rockets have accomplished in the past month and a half should not be diminished. They have showed amazing resiliency by continuing their winning streak despite losing one ( Yao ) of their two best players. But they are not a “great” team.