It's Rockets Time Again

Yesterday was Houston Rockets media day; which means its time (at least for bloggers, early birds and now Astros fans) to refocus our energy on the upcoming NBA season. So my heretofore all-consuming fantasy football team to which hours a week had been dedicated to ensure a repeat Championship will be put in the sidecar as we burn on into Rockets '08-'09 season.

Let's start off with some links...

Obviously, expectations are high with the arrival of Ron-Ron and the general consensus is the Artest deal is the epitome of high-risk, high-reward. Morey is no Gus Hansen but anyone with enough pressure to win can be pushed to take uncharacteristic risks; not that this is that. No one in Houston is second-guessing the trade... yet.

Lakers blog, Forum Blue and Gold, has one of the best objective (or close to it) assessments of the new Rockets in their new series, "Know Your Enemy," a team by team breakdown of the Lakers biggest threats. And from looking through the comments, Lakers fans at least, are concerned about the match-up. Which should be encouraging I guess but as with every other analysis of the Rockets this pre-pre-season, the one caveat is health. And as if on cue, McGrady has announced his slower than originally projected recovery from knee and shoulder surgery. Yao, however, attests to 100% health.

And accordingly, Tom Ziller from AOL Fanhouse has Yao ranked #10 in his NBA's Top 50 players for the upcoming season. He has an interesting take that we may all need to consider. Yes, the pressure of the Beijing Olympics is off and his commitments to China should lessen for at least through this season but perhaps fans shouldn't expect this to be a particularly dominant statistical year. It's more important for Adelman has to find a way to limit Yao's minutes and still win. As a result, this may be the season that Dwight Howard overtakes Yao in the stat boards offensively but if Yao makes it through the entire season and enters the post-season healthy, I'll take it. And so will the Rockets.

Originally posted at Yao Central 2008-09-30 09:25:25