NBA Roundup

And then there were eight

Well, I think we have our Western Conference playoff field all set now. With Yao out for the season, you can pretty much forget about Houston making it. So now, the last two spots should be be easily occupied by Denver and Golden State. The other six, of course are Dallas, San Antonio, New Orleans, Los Angeles (Lakers), Utah, and Phoenix.

What order they'll all finish in is completely up in the air because the margin between first and sixth in the conference is only three games. Just think about the mind-blowing fact that Houston has won thirteen straight games and only moved from tenth to seventh. In the East, a thirteen game winning streak could vault anyone, other than Miami, from the bottom of the standings to darn near the top.

And now, Houston will ultimately be fading from the picture. Yes, they did extremely well against the Wizards, but ultimately reality will set in. Tracy McGrady can only carry this team so far, and it will show pretty soon. I don't care what John Hollinger says about their schedule. Some of those gimme wins he's predicting won't be gimmes by the time the actual game rolls around.

This does raise some serious questions about Houston's future. Right now their fortunes are, as they've been for the past several seasons, tied to two players who are injury prone to say the least. Both Yao and Tracy have missed double digit games every season since Tracy arrived in Houston, and that probably won't be changing. Yao's size alone means that he's going to constantly get preak injuries, like stress fractures that derail him for part of the season. You throw in the aging factor, and it will probably get worse as time goes on. McGrady has suffered from back problems for the last five or six years, and that usually doesn't get right over time either.

I'm not saying they should blow it all up, but this type of thing is enough to make you think about it. You obviously don't get rid of Yao; centers who can put up a 20-10 are rare nowadays, not to mention all the merchandising dollars he generates thanks to his huge overseas fanbase. That would leave McGrady to trade. At this point, I don't think you'd get back good value for him, so I wouldn't go there either. They've done a better job of putting talent around them recently, and that's all you can really do.

McGrady has to be the unluckiest superstar ever. First he goes to Orlando expecting to form an All-Star tag-team with Grant Hill, only to have to endure several seasons of carrying the load alone while Hill went through all those ankle surgeries. Then, when he gets to Houston, his back starts to flare up on a regular basis, and then his best teammate starts having injury issues. I remember a few years ago Tracy was being called the best in the game, even between than Kobe. Not now.