 What's the word, y'all? For the last like month, two months, we kinda assumed that we knew the 10 teams in these conference that was gonna make the play-in, right? These top 10 and these top 10. But look who it is out of nowhere. Just one game behind the Golden State Wars to potentially cause Adam Silver to have an aneurysm, the Houston Rockets is here and the Warriors might be in trouble. I mean, listen, the play-in is the best thing Adam Silver has done as a commissioner from all aspects of it. When I go home, games are amazing. You see that in March Madness as they're putting up all-time numbers as far as the viewer base. And a season three to four years ago if the play-in didn't exist, LeBron James, Anthony Davis, and Steph Curry would be missing the playoffs right now. That is something Adam Silver definitely don't want. And the Rockets might be spoiling the legendary LeBron versus Steph Curry win or go home game. Now I don't have a dog in this fight. I don't care who makes it, who doesn't make it. But things are very interesting right now. Last night, the Golden State Wars played against the Minnesota Timberwolves and shout out to the Timberwolves, they continue to be great even without Carthony Townsend. Last night, there was a moment in it where I was like, oh my God, Anthony Edwards took like an ill-advised three-point shot and I thought it could have cost him the game. It did not, they closed it out. And I'm sure a lot of the conversation today revolving around this game, especially now that the Houston Rockets are getting one game behind the Warriors, is about the rotation piece of the Golden State Warriors right now. So last night, they were up by five with four minutes left in the third quarter. This is where Steph Curry got his rest. I think this is relatively normal for the Warriors where he sits the last couple of minutes in the third quarter, but he did not check back in to 6.54, 6.54 left in the fourth quarter. And at that point, that five-point lead that they had was now a five-point deficit. And that can matter a lot when you're the Golden State Wars, which is just not a good team right now. Now, that's not the reason why they have not looked amazing. It's maybe just one of the factors in a lot of different things. Because even the game before that, when they played against the Indiana Pacers, it was just a rough watch to Pacers. Had it been playing amazing basketball, specifically, Tyrese Halliburne, had it been playing amazing basketball, felt like a very winnable game. But in that, they let the rope go. And again, the timing could not be any worse. Like Steph Curry is not having an amazing month. Last night, again, he was really good. I think 31 points or something like that. But this month for Steph Curry has not been the Steph Curry that you are accustomed to. 22 points per game, 40% from the field, 36% from three. And then last night, he was really good. But for the most part of this month, he's been struggling. And I'm only comparing Steph Curry to Steph Curry, right? A lot of other players in the league, if they put up these numbers, they'll be like, oh my God! But for Steph Curry, when this team needs him to be Superman, he just can't be Superman every single night. And that is part of the problem. They don't have a lot of people over there that can really hold it down if Steph is having a bad stretch. But I don't really care too much to talk about the Warriors and their struggles because I'm more intrigued by the team that is creeping up the Houston Rockets. Yup, you clicked this video, thinking we were talking about the Warriors. No, we're really talking about the Rockets. Now, a lot of y'all know that when I watch NBA games, I have a document and I take notes on the games that I'm watching. It's a full document of pretty much every game I've watched this season. And sometimes my bullet points could be very, very simple. Sometimes it could be very complex. Here are the clip notes version of the things I've seen in the Houston Rockets during their stretch. Now, I have not watched every single win on this current streak, but these are my first notes. The first note, obviously they have Alper and Shingoon out for some time. I don't think it's been officially announced out for the season, but the injury looked bad. It said it was nothing too, too crazy, but we don't know. But now that Alper and Shingoon is not playing, they have the ability to literally switch everything. And they have been, maybe not everything, but they're switching a crazy amount. And I wish I had like second spectrum, which is like this big old statistical thing where I could kinda, cause they track everything. I can track how often they're switching now versus when Alper and Shingoon is playing, but the defense was already really good this season. That's why they were able to play solidly for the beginning of the regular season. It looks even better now because they have really plus defenders and they're switching a lot. I'm gonna jump around here a little bit. Part of that is Jalen Green. And I know Jalen Green is having an explosion of an offensive output right now, which is amazing to see. I've said this before that Jalen Green was one of those great spots in my NBA knowledge where I would watch the Houston Rockets and I still couldn't tell you if I believe he was gonna be a future All-Star or was he gonna end up like Jordan Clarkson? Was he gonna be a Jamal Crawford type of player? I couldn't really bridge the gap to having a formal opinion. And I'm starting to figure that out right now. I'm starting to, now I might be late to the party. Y'all maybe already made your decision on what Jalen Green could've, couldn't be. I'm starting to turn the corner to realize what he could be as a player. Here's his game log. 28 points for a game this month. 51% from the field, 41% from three. And the scoring aspect is dope, right? Obviously they need more scoring output with Alper and Shingoon going down and he's been taking the reins on that. I mean, the game that I watched recently was against the Cavs where he shot nine of 20, which was 45%, but it was such a good game for Jalen Green. Then he had a couple of 40 pieces after that. The scoring thing is the scoring thing, right? Jalen Green came into the league as a guy that allowed him to be projected to be able to score in bunches. We knew that. It's just about getting his efficiency down, whatever, whatever. The things that I'm enjoying most about Jalen Green is two aspects of it. I think his progression as a defensive player in this season alone needs to be talked about more. I did a segment on my podcast, right? Where I was trying to, again, do what I've been trying to do with trying to figure out where Jalen Green is gonna sit as the NBA player. So for three games straight, I watched Jalen Green. I didn't watch the Houston Rockets. I tuned into their games earlier in this season where I didn't care about the other nine people on the court. My eyes were locked on and glued on to Jalen Green and I was disappointed in his defensive output, his rotations, his IQ on the defensive side of the ball because he has the tools, right? He's a thin frame 6-4 guard, so he's limited in a little bit, but he's one of the fastest players in the league. We see on the offensive side that he has just all of the tools to be at least an average to plus defender and in that three game stretch that I watched, I was highly disappointed. I've watched a lot of this team during this run and it's night and day. Now, he's not out there looking like a prime Jimmy Butler. He not looking like Hawaii Leonard, but that improvement from being like, I'm super disappointed to oh, he's average to sometimes above average is night and day. So that's the one thing about Jalen Green's game that I've loved this month. The second thing is the decision-making. In my notes, it's, oh, I thought it was a little bit more complex, right? In my notes, it says Jalen Green is not forcing it as much. That is good enough for me. There are times where they're running some pick and roll actions which is also a part of my notes. I mean, Thompson as a screener has become this thing that they didn't use a lot this season to now that they don't have another big on the court. He's the role man or the screener a lot of the times where he would turn the corner. Jalen Green is turning the corner and instead of just thinking me, me, me, me, me, he's making the right decision. And sometimes the decision is me, me, me, me because I am on a burner and it's not a lot of people that could test me at the rim. But other times I'm seeing them make the right play. And the right play doesn't necessarily translate to getting a bunch of assists a lot of the times, right? But Jalen Green getting the hockey assists or just setting his team up even better is things that he struggled with earlier in the season and I'm seeing him turn. And that is amazing to see. There's more in it. As I woke up, I saw a clip of Shamsaranya talking about how the Houston Rockets offered Jalen Green plus draft capital for Mikhail Bridges in the Brooklyn net set. No, I don't know how that's gonna age, but right now, whoo, that they luck out because Jalen Green looks phenomenal. Yeah, in that Cavs game, there are a lot of times where they were trying to force the ball out of Jalen Green's hands where they were sending two defenders at him. And again, making the right decision. I want to talk about Ahmed Thompson as a screener because the game has opened up so much more for him. Him and his brother obviously play very similar styles. Get well soon. Asar, because that's some scary stuff. I hope you're doing well. But Ahmed Thompson having the space to be the role man. And I mean, he's one of the best offensive rebounding wings slash guards and all the basketball. There's just so much opportunity. And I think the outcomes are very endless for Ahmed Thompson. God forbid he learns how to shoot a little bit. It's gonna be dangerous for the league because everything else about his game is top level as a rookie, right? He's a good decision maker. He's one of the better defenders in all the basketball already. He's a right place, right time type of player. Crashes the glass. He does everything you can imagine for a player. It's set for shoot the three point ball. And again, he's what, 1920 years old? Like there's a lot of time for him to continue to develop and you're seeing some of this stuff now. Jaclyn Dale also on my notes, a real rotational player in basketball. I'll just leave it at that. But there's a lot of conversation about, ooh, is it a coincidence that the team is playing a lot better now? The out-branching goon is out. I would say yes. I'm definitely not about to go to the trade finder and figure out who wants out-branching goon because they have a nine game stretch where they look amazing. But I think the best thing about it is that it shows that this team doesn't have to have a single identity, right? Oh, okay, the single identity is that we're gonna be a really good defensive team. But they have other ways to play on the offensive side of the ball instead of it being like, if out-branching goon's not in the game we don't really know what to do. And I'm not saying that's what it was, but now we have this small ball. We switch everything orchestration to players that we can run out when out-branching goon comes back whether it be at the end of this season or next season. And it's a testament to Eme Yudoka, right? Eme Yudoka has these guys playing. I don't think anybody really expected them to be this good. I know they started off well when they were one of the top-seeds and then struggled the middle part of the season. But I think it just opens up the door to different ways to run a team and do a rebuild, right? The traditional way to do a rebuild is that we're gonna be really, really bad for five to 10 years. No, we're gonna be really, really bad to like, I think the perfect rebuild that the GMs wanna say is like, we have three really bad years. We draft well in those three years and then boom, we're back into playoff contention. And the Rockets had, what, four years of them being bad post-James Hardin? No, not four years. They had three years and then now we're here. They had three really bad years and those years were, again, terrible. They got top picks in those years. And instead of saying like, okay, we're still going to be this super young team, we got money to spend. And they laughed at the Fred Van Vleet contract because he's Fred Van Vleet. He's a one-time All-Star. You giving them that much money? They laughed at the Dillon Brooks contract because people on Twitter was telling him that he gotta learn Chinese after the playoffs last year. But they've built a culture by bringing in one of the better coaches and some good vets. Jeff Green left a championship team to come here because the bag was a little bit nicer here but also you can tell that that man has changed a lot of stuff with this team. I've always said this. Jabar Smiljulian is one of my favorite young players in basketball because that guy plays winning ball. And I guess we haven't seen it on a big scale just yet because they have not played a playoff series but I feel so confident in his ability to not really hurt you when it matters the most. So there's just a lot of stuff going on with the Rockets. Will they take what the Golden State Warriors tendency? I don't really know. Here's the strength of schedule for the rest of the season. Right now the Rockets have the 11th hardest schedule left. They still gotta go against OKC once, Minnesota, the Clippers. They still got Dallas twice, Orlando, and then the Miami Heat. They still got four games against two of the bottom feeders out west. So they hopefully should take care of business. But if you look down here to 2015 is the Warriors. So the Warriors have an easier schedule. Both have 12 games left. Again, who knows? It's the NBA, it's basketball. Anybody can win on any given night. I'm not here to make a prediction. I'm just here to shed some light on some of the cool stuff happening in the Association and the Houston Rockets streak right now is one of the coolest things happening. Let me know what you think in the comment section will the Warriors retain that spot? Do you think the Rockets have a real chance of taking it? I'll be down in the comments reading and I'll see y'all soon.