Beware the Rockets: Houston’s the Playoff Matchup Nobody Wants

A recent team social media post touting the Houston Rockets’ return to the NBA playoffs for the first time in five seasons proclaims, “WE ARE SO BACK.”

Don’t look now, Western Conference, but a jelling core on a late-season surge could give this Rockets run some staying power.

Houston entered Tuesday with 15 wins in its past 17 games and a 3 1/2-game edge on the Los Angeles Lakers for the No. 2 seed in the West. The pesky Rockets have shaken several fellow contenders — including conference- and league-leading Oklahoma City — while laying blueprints for more mayhem.

“We’ve upped our physicality, upped our intensity overall, and I think guys are just really locked in on both sides of the ball,” Rockets coach Ime Udoka said. “Getting what we want offensively, guarding the way we are defensively, it’s what we want to see going into the playoffs.”

Conversely, the rest of the West would just as soon see anything but such cohesion from the Rockets with five days left in the regular season. While leading scorer Jalen Green is averaging 22.6 points, 5.6 rebounds and 4.6 assists in 24 games since the All-Star break, seven teammates have joined him in claiming the role of team high scorer over that span.

On Sunday, Dillon Brooks contributed 24 points and Alperen Sengun notched a double-double with 19 points and 14 rebounds to lift the Rockets to a 106–96 victory at Golden State — one of several teams vying for positioning in the Nos. 4–8 range in the West.

Houston hounded Warriors star Stephen Curry throughout the game, limiting him to three points on 1-for-10 shooting, including seven misses on eight attempts from deep.

Pending results of the upcoming play-in tournament, as many as four Western Conference playoff teams could hail from California. The win against the Warriors was promising, then, as it snapped Houston’s seven-game road losing streak against Golden State.

The Rockets on Friday can end a seven-game road skid against the Lakers, which would all but sew up the No. 2 seed.

Should seeding hold in the first two rounds of the playoffs, the Rockets would have to prevail in Oklahoma City to reach the franchise’s first NBA Finals since 1994–95.

While there isn’t precedent for that this season — the Rockets lost both road meetings to the Thunder by a combined 28 points — Houston surely boasts recent bragging rights over OKC, which long had a bead on home-court advantage in the playoffs.

Fueled by Green (34 points) and Sengun (31), the host Rockets ended the Thunder’s 11-game winning streak with a 14-point victory Friday.

The Thunder trimmed a 23-point deficit to single digits in the fourth quarter before Green helped the Rockets regain control. He scored 15 points in the fourth as Houston led by double digits for the last 7:09.

“Our guys understand what’s at stake coming up,” Udoka said. “I think we’ve made a conscious effort to really lock in and focus.”

Extra cramming has come with the territory, but the Rockets don’t mind.

“We want to be very sharp and deliberate about what we’re doing going into the playoffs,” Udoka said. “We’ve thrown a little bit more at them as far as preparation, and our guys are handling it well.

“Understanding that this is the level it’s going to get to, these are teams we’re going to play against. And for our guys that have never been there, it was about playing great basketball heading into postseason.”

At long last, the Rockets are “SO BACK” in the playoffs.

And it’s looking like that stay could be substantial.