{"id":548083,"date":"2026-01-20T03:34:13","date_gmt":"2026-01-20T03:34:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/548083\/"},"modified":"2026-01-20T03:34:13","modified_gmt":"2026-01-20T03:34:13","slug":"houston-rockets-receive-modest-mid-season-grade-amid-strong-start-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/548083\/","title":{"rendered":"Houston Rockets receive modest mid-season grade amid strong start"},"content":{"rendered":"

Houston Rockets receive modest mid-season grade amid strong start<\/a> originally appeared on The Sporting News<\/a>. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Heading into the start of the 2025-26 season, the Houston Rockets<\/a> found themselves facing big expectations. After pairing their promising young core with an all-time talent in Kevin Durant, many believed that they had the pieces to make a run at a championship. Despite navigating some obstacles through the first half of the year, they’ve lived up to the high bar set for them and are poised to remain a threat in the Western Conference.<\/p>\n

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As the regular season reaches its halfway point, the Rockets have a lot to feel positive about. They are a top-five seed in the West currently with a 25-15 record. With there being only a small gap between them and the teams ahead of them, there remains a possibility Durant and company climb the standings during the second half of the year.<\/p>\n

While teams gear up for the back end of their schedule, ESPN’s Kevin Pelton decided to dish out mid-season grades for all 30 NBA teams. The Rockets landed a fair grade of a B+ as they maintain a 52-win pace.<\/p>\n

“I thought that expectations were inflated for Houston in the wake of Fred VanVleet’s September ACL tear, which left the Rockets without any proven point guard options,” Pelton wrote<\/a>. “As Houston hoped, recent lottery picks Amen Thompson and Reed Sheppard have solidified the position, with Sheppard making a leap in his sophomore campaign. And Kevin Durant has been the difference-maker the Rockets hoped, leaving Houston top-five in offensive rating despite a recent slump.”<\/p>\n

Losing Fred VanVleet before the season even began was a huge blow for the Rockets, but they’ve bounced back nicely. Led by the star duo of Durant and Alperen Sengun, Houston has solidified itself in the Western Conference’s upper echelon.<\/p>\n

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The Rockets have come out of the gates strong, but there is still a lot of work to be done. They’ll look to gain as much momentum as possible in the second half of the season to gear up for what should be a highly competitive playoffs in the Western Conference.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Houston Rockets receive modest mid-season grade amid strong start originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":548084,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3794],"tags":[1307,883,7,866,292,194,4066,938,3570,6,1081,211,574],"class_list":{"0":"post-548083","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston-rockets","8":"tag-alperen-sengun","9":"tag-amen-thompson","10":"tag-basketball","11":"tag-fred-vanvleet","12":"tag-houston","13":"tag-houston-rockets","14":"tag-houstonrockets","15":"tag-kevin-durant","16":"tag-kevin-pelton","17":"tag-nba","18":"tag-reed-sheppard","19":"tag-rockets","20":"tag-western-conference"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/115925330653577502","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=548083"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548083\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/548084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=548083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=548083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=548083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}