The official start of the NBA season was back in October, but the unofficial start is Christmas Day when the Association puts together a slate of games to go with holiday festivities. That included a primetime matchup between the Rockets and Lakers. Fortunately, for Houston it was rather anticlimactic with an easy win on the road, but it’s been a weird couple weeks out of town for Ime Udoka and his crew. Let’s look it over.
**Road Woes**
The Rockets spent the better part of the last two weeks on a six-game roadie that saw them ping-pong across the Western Conference. In a weird quirk of the schedule, they played in Denver twice with New Orleans in between (insert shrug emoji). After losing to Denver yet again, they followed it with an absolutely rancid comeback loss to the Pelicans before bouncing back to beat the Nuggets. They then dropped a stinker in Sacramento and then got blown out by the Clippers, who, to be fair, have been surging lately.
That set up a really weird Christmas matchup against the Lakers who the Rockets rolled over before coming back home and destroying the Cavs.
On the road this season, the Rockets have lost at Utah, at Dallas, at Sacramento and at New Orleans. That’s, um, not great. And this holiday road trip was not exactly merry and bright.
**Still Really Good**
Despite the road losses, this is still a formidable team with big wins over some very good teams. They remain in the top 10 in both offensive rating (second) and defensive rating (seventh), and they rank in the top five in a number of categories including rebounding, plus-minus, three-point percentage, net rating, second chance points, steals, field goal percentage and points per game. This blip of unfortunate losses doesn’t take away from the fact that the Rockets are still very very good.
**Defensive Slippage**
The good news is that their issues have been on the defensive end of the floor. Offensively, they have not regressed in the slightest meaning they are likely to be one of the better offensive teams in the NBA as the season continues. The reason being 21st in defensive rating in their last five games (ouch!) is positive is that they will most certainly not remain that bad. We saw some of that begin to turn around in Los Angeles and against Cleveland. Udoka’s teams are always good defensively and there is no reason to think that won’t be corrected. When it is, they will start winning more consistently again. Hell, even the Thunder are just 3-4 in their last seven games.
**The Return of DFS**
Dorian Finney-Smith made his season debut on Christmas Day. The offseason acquisition has been out recovering from offseason ankle surgery. Once he gets in shape and his minutes restrictions are lifted, he promises to add another very good defensive presence along with a solid distance shooter. With Tari Eason also back, the team is fully healthy for the first time (even with Alperen Sengun resting against Cleveland with a tight calf muscle).
This article appears in [Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2025](https://www.houstonpress.com/?post_type=newspack_collection&p=390334).