Here were the Rockets up to all of their old tricks - chasing their tails on offense while the defense rolls over and plays dead.
The Bucks were without three of the regulars in Michael Redd, Andrew Bogut and Luke Ridnour.
Then again, the Rockets might as well have boarded Tracy McGrady (1-for-9, 3 points), Yao Ming (2-for-8, 7 points) and Rafer Alston (2-for-8, 9 points) back at the kennel.
Who wants to be the first one to step up after practice today and point a finger of blame at somebody else?
One game from the All-Star break and this is a collection that is far more poodle than pit bull. Oh, they can look pretty strutting with a ribbon in their hair when everything is going right. But they don't have an ounce of snarl.
Rockets latest flop changes game [Jonathan Feigan, Chron.com]
Rockets owner Leslie Alexander said months ago that he wanted to see his team play just 10 games together.
Sorry. It's too late. They've played just six together. That will have to be enough.
The trade deadline is in 10 days and Daryl Morey is on the clock.
There have been too many signs that this team just does not care enough. For whatever reasons - and that silly, little locker room tension would qualify as a pathetic excuse/explanation - the Rockets cannot maintain intensity and focus, effort and energy game after game.
Even for Mr. Calm, It's almost panic time on Rockets [Jerome Solomon, Chron.com]
After last night's horrible showing in Milwaukee, the Rockets have people freaking out.
Yes the King is normally Mr. Calm in these situations, but I've actually unlocked the handcuffs and opened the briefcase in which the panic button is held. ... My right hand is hovering.
I can't get any closer to pushing the panic button than I am now.
Do you think after talking to a few players, Rick Adelman and the GM, I'll close the brief case without a detonation?
Rockets still have 30 games to figure it out. [Richard Justice, Chron.com]
I keep going back to what Rick Adelman said a couple of weeks ago when he finally had both Ron Artest and Tracy McGrady back in the lineup. He said it would take a few weeks to get guys comfortable with one another and to figure out a rotation. At the time, he left open the possibility of changing the rotation depending on the matchup.
So I keep telling myself there's still a chance a light will come on, and the Rockets will start to resemble a team. They've done that for a few stretches, but then they follow it up with another embarrassment.
This loss to Milwaukee qualifies as an embarrassment on several levels. It's so bad that you wonder if what is broken can ever be fixed. Coaches sometimes use the phrase ''lightning in a bottle'' to explain how teams click.
In other words, they can't really explain. We all saw it last season in the 22-game winning streak. The Rockets played as one. They moved the ball, were terrific on the defensive end and made winning plays. They also seemed to be having fun.
They're clearly not having any fun now. I don't know if Tracy McGrady is to blame, or if it's Ron Artest. I don't know if one or both of them has killed the lockerroom chemistry.
I still think a few victories would improve things dramatically, but maybe they're just not capable of that.
The NBA trading deadline is 10 days away, and Daryl Morey has decisions to make. I'm not sure his decisions now are as tough as they would have been, say, a month ago.
This season began with the Rockets thinking this group was good enough to win a championship. They're clearly not. If Morey makes a trade, he's not going to be breaking up something that works.
It's important to note that the season also began with Chron Sports columnists falling over themselves with rampant Rockets praise...
There's something hugely refreshing about the Rockets. That is, they're really good and they know they're really good and they know these next few months are going to be all kinds of fun.
It's going to be hard for some of us to enjoy the regular season because there's a feeling that this time the playoffs are going to be different. That's a danger, but it's a good problem to deal with.
This isn't the kind of situation we get from our professional teams very often. The Astros have had success, but Drayton McLane is never going to put all his chips on the table and go for it. He's going to spend just enough to be competitive, is never going to allow his people put a complete team on the field.
Meanwhile, the Texans just seemed jinxed. There's no other explanation for it. You can take two or three steps back and see a team with a pretty good offense and with a defense that did a lot of good things against the Colts. And someway, somehow it fell apart.
Leslie Alexander gave his people the go-ahead to do whatever needed to be done. He had to be talked into the Ron Artest deal, but when Daryl Morey and Rick Adelman wanted to do it, he did it.
Likewise, the Carl Landry signing put the payroll higher than Alexander wanted it to go. He agreed, though, because in the end, it closed the gap on the Spurs, Lakers, etc. I once heard a NASCAR owner say: "When our people come to me with something new, you don't ask how much it's going to cost. You ask if it'll make us go faster. If it'll make us go faster, we have to have it."
Whoops. If this season has been anything, it's not a lot of fun. What all of the Chronicle's columnists are lacking is the ability to provide serious analysis of Houston sports teams. Analysis such as this is sorely lacking {Houston's Clear Thinkers}
Frankly, looks to me as if the Rockets would be better off at this point working on their "Life-After-McGrady" plan.
So far I haven't heard anyone address what is now unquestionably the Rockets folly of ridding themselves of Jeff Van Gundy in exchange for Rick Adelman. Even after a loss in which they gave up 124 points (wait, say that again 124 freaking points) to a middle of the pack Eastern Conference team, such as the Milwaukee Bucks (25-29, currently the 8th seed in the East) there's little talk about what a disaster the Rockets' defense has become. If you need any more convincing that's 25 points higher than what the Bucks are averaging per game all season long. For a team with a player whose unofficial motto is "no layups", the Bucks sure had a ton of them last night.
Granted, you can't expect to see 'gloom and doom' 24/7 when it comes to the local sports fanchises, that would be unreadable. But isn't 'sort of' fair to expect sports analysis to be, I don't know, based on reality?
Reality says that McGrady has been a good player in constant decline over past years to the point that he's morphed into the injury riddled, no heart, just-above-average player he is today. Yao is Yao, a quality big man whose game is limited by his size and slow feet. Ron Artest is over the hill, Rafer Alston is the worst starting point guard in the league, and Shane Battier playing team defense is hurting the Rockets because no one else is. If you add to that the reality there's nothing in Adelman's resume that suggests an improvement over Van Gundy and you have another average season with a first round loss in the playoffs dead in your sights.
Depressing? Yup, and given that this is Houston the Rockets will hang on to declining players for too long. Where's that analysis?
