- The Asian Super Bowl: Like the real Super Bowl, in that neither of them could score all that easily. Yi had a case of the yips, 1-10 from the field. Yao got in foul trouble early and left the game in the more than able hands of Tracy McGrady, who dominated the game early and often to keep the Bucks from coming back.

- Another low turnover night was a good sign. Another good sign for this game was the 9 shots from Rafer Alston, who plugged 4 of them for his first time shooting over 40% since January 15th vs. Philadelphia, when he was 7-17 from the floor in a crushing home loss to the lowly Sixers. More importantly, it was the second time since after Christmas where he actually took less than 10 shots from the floor.

-From the Bucks perspective, not much to critique really; when you shoot 38% from the floor as a team, you aren’t often in a game anyway, so they should be thrilled that they kept it close. They did a great job with turnovers as well.

-In the big picture for the Rockets (uh, well, as big as possibly getting a mediocre playoff seeding can be), they continue to flounder in the 10th spot, but they are still just 6 games back from 1st seed Phoenix in what could be termed as a wide open Western Conference this year. They remain a game and a half back of both Golden State and Denver for an actual playoff spot, but unfortunately Golden State has been as hot as Houston recently and Denver just got Carmelo Anthony back. I wouldn’t go out purchasing any playoff packages just yet.

-Pick Apart Rick Adelman’s Minutes Allocated Segment: I don’t mind seeing Scola and Landry’s Hat more or less splitting time, but I think Adelman needs to go with the hot hand the second he figures out who that is. In other words, I’d want one of them playing 30 minutes or so and the other playing 18. Instead, they split the bit and defensive force Chuck Hayes continued to cut into their PT. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big Chuck Hayes guy, but lets accept this team’s limitations. Yao is a force, McGrady is off and on, but with Alston and Battier out there, the team is more or less hoping and praying that one of them starts sticking three pointers. That leaves 2 consistent scorers and 2 guys I wouldn’t touch in the three point shootout at All-Star weekend. Putting Hayes out there just isolates McGrady and Yao even more, wheras if Landry gets the ball inside, he’s going to score, and Scola can stick 18 footers and is pretty respectable in the post in his own right.

Of course, there’s also the whole “playing Rafer Alston in the first place” thing, but lets leave that one aside for now. The Rockets need offense from the four to put up with Battier and Alston’s contributions.

-The Rockets finish out their midwestern road trip with a little trip to the Wolves’ den. Minnesota had been a joke this year, but have reached up from “historically awful” to a more mediocre 5-5 in their last ten, mainly off the back of Celtics cast-off Al Jefferson, who has torn up the net to the tune of 20+ points in 7 of his last 8 games and owns a shiny PER of 23.73. The main key to the Wolves recent run has been combo forward Ryan Gomes, who has started to see more playing time and has responded with 8 games of over 15 points in the last month. The Rockets will be hardpressed to find an answer for Jefferson, but Battier should be able to hold down Gomes.

-Was this the game that Carl Landry broke through and demanded he be a bigger part of the team?  I haven’t seen many players as quick as he is getting up, and as long as he gets the ball by the basket, it’s a good bet that it’s going in.  He’s shooting an obscene 69.5% from the field on the year.  At the very least, Rick Adelman should get him more involved in the offense.  Friend of TSWOSM Brandon came up with a great nickname, and so it shall stand.

To Berman’s Dry Cleaning, Best Wishes, Carl Landry.

-This game shouldn’t have been as close as it was.  The Pacers shot an absurd 50% on three-pointers, most of which came relatively well guarded.  Meanwhile, the Rockets continued to pass the ball down to The Official Whipping Boy of TSWOSM, Rafer Alston, who responded by shooting a superb 3-11 from the field.  At one point Bill Worrell remarked “Rafer was surprised when he turned the corner and he was unguarded.”  Well, he shouldn’t be.  He’s always wide open, because nobody cares if he shoots.

-Pretty poor game by Yao standards.  4-12 from the field.  I was thinking that Indiana was being really physical with him and getting away with a lot of calls, but then I look and he shot 12 free throws, so I guess complaining about that is kind of dumb.  On the plus side, no turnovers.  McGrady continues to be the best passer on the team with 9 assists.  Shane Battier’s really had a tough year…not as bad as Bruce Bowen has had for the Spurs, but his shooting numbers are down all across the board and the Rockets could really use some more conversions on wide open looks.

-To be honest, I had forgotten the Pacers actually existed.  Jermaine O’Neal never seems to play anymore, and the other guys I identify as Pacers just don’t play for them anymore; Miller, Artest, Rik Smits, hell, even Austin Croshere isn’t sucking up salary cap space anymore.  It’s a weird team to see on paper.  And Travis Diener is taking the last shot?  Really?

Join us tomorrow when we recap exciting action in Milwaukee, where Andrew Bogot will try to become a little bit less anonymous than Wayne Summers of Kansas in Kansas 

1) Rafer Alston is a very mediocre player who does not deserve his playing time.

-This has been born out over the years. Rafer Alston consistently shoots the basketball and is about as good at it as Stephen A. Smith is at blogging. Perhaps he should be allowed 7-8 shots in a game, but he instead shoots around 11 or 12 times a game, the vast majority of which, in my experience as a Rockets fan, I can tell you are wide open shots after Yao Ming or Tracy McGrady are double teamed. Despite the fact that he has all the open real-estate in the world, he is a terrible shooter, the climax of which was his 37.6% field goal shooting in the 2006-2007 season, a figure that was the lowest among any qualifying player in the NBA last year. I briefly considered naming this blog “Skip To My Poo”. I am also 22 years old.

Rafer Alston does a few things well. He does not turn the ball over much. He is good for one or two arrests an offseason, which has injected some bail and fine money into the Houston community. He is very comfortable running down the floor on the fast break, which would be quite helpful if the Rockets had a team that was not based around a 7’6 center, Tracy McGrady, and a bunch of guys with no ability to drive to the basket, outside of perhaps Aaron Brooks.

2) Tracy McGrady is a wonderful player when he is healthy. This has even happened a few times in his career.

-I have a very big mancrush on Tracy McGrady. He is an amazing player who can completely take over a basketball game. Then he falls down on his ankle or gets the flu or his back hurts or wolves chase him through a burning ring of fire and he has to sit out. The Rockets are at a point where they need to get players that can help Yao Ming, so that his career is not as similarly wasted as Tracy McGrady’s was in Orlando. Unfortunately, McGrady is the epitome of the modern NBA dilemma: even when healthy, the Rockets have never surrounded him and Yao with enough talent to win anything. With him, the Rockets are a quality NBA team when he is healthy, but not really a championship contender. Without him, the Rockets are a .500 team that isn’t good enough for the postseason. Getting rid of McGrady won’t solve anything; he’s injury prone and his value is as low as it’s ever been, not to mention he’s become a Houston icon and has always been an extremely popular player. However, keeping McGrady at his salary makes every season a roll of the dice in two ways: 1) Can the Rockets get enough talent around him under the salary cap to win, and 2) Will he be healthy when it’s playoff time? Look for more on this one, with one comparison that I find extremely apt.

3) The Rockets’ third best player is Luis Scola.

- Yet, he only plays 20 minutes a game. Funny how that works out, eh Rick Adelman? Most coaches, losing their superstar, would try to bring more touches to their most effective shooters, like say, Luis Scola, who shoots 49% from the floor. Or perhaps Carl Landry, who has been otherworldly in limited minutes. Instead, it’s been decided that Rafer Alston should have over 10 shots a game, as he has in 16 of the previous 17 games. Rafer Alston is shooting 39.2% from the floor this year–and that’s a good year by the standards he has set the last few years. In conclusion, the Rocket offense the last few years, due to both Adelman and Van Gundy’s myopia with regards to letting Rafer Alston shoot the ball more than the better players on the team, can best be summed in this clip:

There are other, more basic, tenets about being a Rockets fan that I think are kind of obvious and therefore did not think warranted a special section. Such as Yao being one of the top ten players in the league, Matt Maloney being the anti-Christ, and Scott Padgett’s “two beers” commercial being the best thing to ever happen to television. The important thing to learn from our creed is that I hate watching Rafer Alston shoot the ball 10 times a game, and it’s about time someone complained about it on the internet. Asides from at ClutchFans.

I do not promise to post everyday, but I do promise to be as timely as I possibly can with this thing. I also promise that I own a Bostjan Nachbar Rockets jersey. I’m not even kidding about that one. So keep coming back here when you are bored and do not feel like working, and I will continue to provide you some content that will make you think “Wow, Rafer Alston sure does suck! I’m glad someone is on top of this so I don’t have to be.” And occasionally we might even have some good analysis; we do love those new and complex NBA stats. We know who Dean Oliver and John Hollinger are, and we like 82games.com.

We do try to be funny. Sometimes we fail at it miserably. Often, probably. So don’t take it personally. I promise we don’t really hate Rafer Alston as much as we seem to*, we are just passionate fans who want the Rockets that we grew up with back. The ones that won titles and got discredited because Michael Jordan wasn’t around or in good shape. We used to be bitter about this, but we don’t care anymore. We just want to win some more of those. Or at least a token playoff series.

*-May in fact, be a lie.