Western Conference

Now I'm on my soapbox.

I don't like when people say, "You guys would've won it if you didn't get kicked out of the playoffs." People may not realize, but the notorious Austin Gigaronies, we finished top of the Western Conference, and then us and LA both got, got excommunicated, didn't get to participate in the playoffs, and New York ended up winning.

I don't like when people say that you guys, if you guys stayed in, you would've won the championship, 'cause that's just not right, 'cause you gotta play the games.

But I also don't like when people try to discredit how good that team was Based on salary cap when the New York team had three former All Blacks on the field.

Now all of a sudden Will Hardy gets to go from developing young guys with no stakes to all of a sudden we have stakes because we want to win.

We want to make a push for the playing tournament in the Western Conference.

We want to look like a serious basketball team.

We also think that Darren Peterson has the potential to be a superstar in this league.

You've got a ladder.

Like, you know, do NBA fans get confused when teams in the Eastern Conference play against teams in the Western Conference, but when it comes to playoff spots, you're only fighting against the teams that are in your conference? Like, it's not that hard to grasp.

You've got a ladder.

You've got, you know, points for against, sorry, goals for against points, wins, losses, blah, blah, blah, against the teams in your division.

There's relevant questions around things, but I think The anticipation for how they go about solving all of these things in one sweeping blow, the biggest one being 45 wins and finishing seventh in the West last season.

Can you go and one-up yourself? Can you get the 48 wins? Can you move up a spot in the Western Conference to the top six and not be in a playing tournament? What does that look like if you are able to do that? How much do you learn about yourself and evolve your process within it all? Very fun.

Do the Suns have a move in their back pocket to make to help them get there? Brian Gregory, what is everything looking like for you in your second full season? There's just so many questions, and I love it all.

It's not, oh, my goodness, I'm worried about if they're going to be able to handle their business.

The draft picks, what does that mean for the draftees? and some contracts that can change.

And how is the expansion going to shape out for the league? Well, in 2028, which is supposed to be right around the corner, I think just two seasons away, actually, supposed to be LeBron James' retirement date, there's going to be two new teams joining the NBA, and both of those squads are going to be, well, one of those squads is going to be located in Las Vegas, another one of those squads is going to be located in Seattle, and both of those teams are going to be part of the Western Conference, which means the East...

has to take one of the West's current teams and join the conference, which I personally am not a fan of because it's the Minnesota Timberwolves.

First things first, how will expansion help the league? It's going to help the league really diversify its talent.

They're just around the corner.

And obviously it will be a big season for a team looking to get back to the NBA Finals or at the very least make another run at the top seed in the Western Conference.

So that is something to look forward to for sure.

Over the weekend, the Jackals held their auditions.

And they also said that they're hoping to travel to those closer games.

Last season, they made it out to a Rockets game.

They were even present for some of the Thunder games in the Western Conference Finals.

So I think this season they're looking to do something similar, specifically that second game of the year against the Rockets in Austin at Moody Center.

Right.

Um, but Mr. Mr. Ginato, he's a rockets projected lineup outlook for 2026, you know, and, and Rockets fans, I don't know if you're like me, if you're sick of this, but everybody loves to remind us of the Rockets finished 52-30 in the Western Conference.

First-round exit against the Lakers.

So what? And the Lakers lost the next series.

I'm ready again.

I feel like I just have to knock on wood all morning because a lot of these guys are just reporting, you know, trying to get in our heads.

trying to put some some bad juju in this universe and oh man i mean hopefully the rockets are watching this stuff players if you're watching this not just me but if you're listening and reading these articles with members in your training camp hopefully they're reading these articles to you guys and telling you like yo this is what someone's supposed to say this is what someone's saying feel like if i'm one of you guys i'm printing off this article and I'm sticking it in the locker room reminding these guys this is what they're saying about us hopefully we can use this as motivation to motivate us into being better into doing better I don't know if you guys have ever seen the movie Major League but you know they utilize no spoilers or anything but you have this goal the goal is obviously to win a chip maybe you know that's kind of an extreme goal but maybe a different goal is we're we're trying to break it out of the first round trying to break that first round curse get back to the western conference finals at the very least or second round third round i mean you know baby steps right but equally equally i want the rockets to motivate themselves somehow because there's a tremendous amount of potential here we've talked about this this theory of potentiality or potentials probability and statistics all that jazz i mean we've talked about it i mean i don't know if i've already mentioned this but lp is already in the in the lab this morning he's already posting videos of himself you know getting ready for training camp i mean a lot of these guys are already over the weekend chip england dropping videos fred and chip england uh fred and and and kd so It's going to take time to rebuild this chemistry.

I'm sure there's some chemistry already there.

I think they're going to be a lot of fun to watch with LaMelo and Ant.

And the rest of that gang in a very, very competitive Western conference in particular, they'll be starting up.

And then of course, you know, the Vikings will be king of the hill and go for football team.

We'll drag along somehow.