SpaceCity

Let me start off by saying that if you are a superstitious person, you may want to stop reading now. I am going to be daring and look ahead a few games and speculate on the chances of making an already-historic run into a run that breaks a 37 year old record.

First of all, the all-time record for the longest winning streak in the NBA belongs to the 71-72 Los Angeles Lakers. This was a team featuring Wilt Chamberlaine and Jerry West. I don’t expect the Rockets, or any team for that matter, to challenge that record any time soon. That record is probably one of the safest records in sports. A run like that in this day and age of the NBA would be quite an amazing feat.

No, I want to speculate on the possibilities of capturing that number two spot. I want to talk about the chances of the Houston Rockets winning 20 games in a row.

The Rockets, as of March 7 2008, are on a 17 game winning streak. They are on a streak that only 12 other teams in the history of the NBA have experienced. In fact, 2 of those teams were from last year. Both the Phoenix Suns and Dallas Mavericks went on a 17 game winning streak last season.

Now here is where it starts to get fun. If the Rockets win 18 in a row, then they will join 6 other teams. Only 6 teams in the history of the NBA have ever won 18 or more games in a row. Every single one of those teams won the NBA championship the year that they made those runs. All of them. The Rockets will be facing a strong New Orleans team on Saturday in an attempt to reach that plateau of greatness.

Wanna keep going? Ok, check this out. Only 3 teams in the history of the NBA have ever won 19 or more games in a row. In the 99-00 season, the Los Angeles Lakers ran off 19 in a row on their way to the first of 3 Championships in a row. That is also the year that they acquired Shaquille O’Neal.

Now we have come to the mark that is both historic and attainable. The second best consecutive winning streak in the NBA’s history belongs to the Milwaukee Bucks. In the 1970-1971 season, on a team featuring Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the Bucks won 20 games in a row. At the time this was an all-time record, one that would not be broken until….. the very next year!

The following season, the Los Angeles ran off an incredible 33 games in a row.

It’s an exciting run that the Rockets are on right now. They have already busted their previous franchise record of 15 consecutive wins. They are currently on a streak of 11 road wins which is also a franchise record. In addition to that, the Rockets have also set a new franchise record by winning 8 games in a row by double digits. Of course, both of these streaks are still ongoing.

Being an avid Rockets fan for 23 years now, I am really enjoying what is going with this team right now. Considering all of the changes from last season and our rough start of the season, it’s pretty incredible watching this team dominate the way it has been. Crushing Dallas was a wonderful feeling. Beating New Orleans next will be a challenge. But if we get that 18th win, then the next 3 games will be against the weaker New Jersey Nets, Atlanta Hawks, and Charlotte Bobcats.

Even if the Rockets somehow manage to take this streak to 21, things get real difficult on the schedule. Beginning on March 16, the Rockets will begin a run of games against some of the best in the league. This stretch will include games against The Los Angeles Lakers, Boston Celtics, New Orleans Hornets, Golden State Warriors, Phoenix Suns, and the defending Champion San Antonio Spurs.

Here’s hoping that Houston can at least win 3 more games. 20 is my magic number. It will be a proud day for the Rockets and Houston if they manage to do something that has not been done in over 37 years. Great work guys. Keep it up!

** Update #1:
03/08/08 - The Rocket beat the New Orleans Hornets to extend their winning streak to 18. As mentioned above, only six other teams in NBA history have every won 18 or more games consecutively. Next up for the Rockets will be the New Jersey Nets, the Atlanta Hawks, then the Charlotte Bobcats. Let’s just say that the odds of surpassing the 20 game winning streak set by the 1971 Milwaukee Bucks just got a lot better!

**Update #2:
03/10/08 - 19 in a row! The Rockets defeated the New Jersey Nets by 18 points to extend their streak to 19 and also to tie an NBA record for most consecutive wins by double-digits. That streak is at 10. By winning 19 in a row, the Rockets become 1 of 4 teams to ever win 19 or more games in a row. Next up is Atlanta.

**Update #3:
03/12/08 - 20!! The Rockets defeated the Atlanta Hawks to tie the 1970-1971 Milwaukee Bucks team for the second best winning streak in the history of the NBA. The Rockets won by 8 points, which ended the run of 10 games in a row won by 10 or more points. We tied the record. However, the franchise consecutive road wins streak is still alive and well. This win may have been the best of the streak. The Rockets played horribly. They couldn’t hit a basket to save their lives, at least for most of the game. Defense won this one. The Rockets face the Charlotte Bobcats at home on Friday. If we get that win then the streak will be 21 and counting.

**Update #4:
03/14/08 - 21 and counting…. The Rockets had another horrible shooting game and yet again managed to find the a way to keep the streak alive. Next up…. the Lakers!

**Update #5:
03/16/08 - 22 baby! The Rockets took care of business against the Los Angeles Lakers. With this win the Rockets not only keep the streak alive at 22 wins in a row, they now exclusively own the #1 spot in the Western Conference. Now having beaten the top team in the West, the Rockets get ready to take on the best team from the East, the Boston Celtics. Boston also owns the best record in the NBA. We have a tough week ahead of us. Getting a win against Boston would be huge. Put it this way, if they beat Boston then there is no reason to think that extending this streak to 33 or beyond is out of reach. I’m not saying it would be easy, I’m just saying that suddenly it would actually seem possible. I’m just saying……

**Update #6:
03/18/08 - The Streak is dead. Boston came to town and stopped the streak at 22. No shame in losing to the best team in the NBA. They really worked us over! Now with the burden of The Streak over it’s back to positioning ourselves for the playoffs.

I have been wanting to change the look of my site for quite a while but could never seem to make the time to design a site that I would like to look at every day. I also had a hard time finding a free template that I liked. Well I finally found one that caught my eye. I’m gonna test drive it for a few days and see what I and others think.

You will immediately notice the complete lack of pictures and widgets. I was really wanting to go for that whole minimalistic thing. But in case any of you actually care about what I am listening to at this moment, or who my Twitter friends are, or random pics from my Flickr account, or my latest XBOX 360 stats…… I’ll probably get around to finding a home for all that on another page. I kinda like the whole clean look. However, I am considering replacing the cherry blossom branch with my name. We’ll see.

01-22-08_2254.jpg, originally uploaded by SpaceCity.

Currently watching the Foo Fighters kick some ass!

Here are some pictures (from my camera phone, unfortunately) for you all to check out. I hope to post some pictures of our house that I took with the real camera. I just need to upload them to Flickr and then post them here for you all to see. The ones I took of the house with the camera phone look bad. But the ones I took of Myles in the yard amongst the lights are viewable. And for good measure, I threw in a couple of pictures of Myles trying on his new tuxedo. Can you say cute?

Has it really been over a month since I posted anything here? My apologies. I can’t really complain about my family and friends not utilizing the social capabilities of this site when I can’t even make time to keep it updated!

So here we are, Thanksgiving week, and December is almost upon us. It’s been a busy month. Marya spent the first 10 days of November in Italy while Myles and I stayed home. Don’t feel sorry for us guys. We had a great time. At least now I know Myles really likes beer and strippers!

I also spent a whole Saturday competing in the 2007 AIR Houston competition. AIR stands for Accessibility Internet Rally. The competition consists of various teams building websites for Non-Profit Organizations. Everyone has 8 hours to take a design and build it out into a a fully accessible Section 508-compliant website. All government and non-profit websites have to meet certain accessibility guidelines. I’d say my team did pretty well. At least we feel like we did. We’ll find out next Thursday at the awards banquet.

So this week I can look forward to getting the house presentable for the friends and relatives that we will be having over for Thanksgiving. Then on Friday I get to drag down all of the Christmas boxes from the attic and start getting ready to do up the house and yard. It will probably be a big pain doing it but it will all be worth it after it is done.

It was real good seeing and hanging out with Bill for a couple of nights, even if the circumstances that brought him here were not so good. We send our best wishes and feel confident that all will be good. We put in some time with Gears of War. That’s always fun.

I’ll end with a brief mention of the Rockets.

Well, we started out great. Tracy got NBA player of the week in the first week of the season. Yao was looking a lot like he did last year at this time before he got injured. Bonzi and Mike James were playing great coming off the bench. We beat San Antonio. We were 5-1 before dropping 4 in a row. It’s OK, though. It’s eary in the season. We have brand new coaching staff. We have many new players. Tracy has been out with an injury. Our schedule has been brutal, loaded with many back-to-backs against great teams. I have no doubt that this team is fully capable of making a strong run come Playoff time. The All-Star ballot is up. Use the widget below and vote for Tracy, Yao, Shane, and Luis now. Thanks.

Anyway, that’s about it. I’ll try to post at least once a week so you guys have something new to read. Have a great Thanksgiving!