{"id":695205,"date":"2026-04-03T03:35:20","date_gmt":"2026-04-03T03:35:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/695205\/"},"modified":"2026-04-03T03:35:20","modified_gmt":"2026-04-03T03:35:20","slug":"rockets-clinch-playoff-spot-yardbarker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/695205\/","title":{"rendered":"Rockets Clinch Playoff Spot | Yardbarker"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Rockets became the fifth Western Conference team to secure a playoff spot on Thursday when Phoenix lost at Charlotte, per the NBA (<a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/NBA\/status\/2039876129171915046\" rel=\"nofollow\">Twitter link<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p>Houston is currently 47-29, the No. 5 seed in the West, while No. 7 Phoenix dropped to 42-35. There\u2019s no way for the Suns to make up the 5.5-game deficit with only five regular season games remaining on their schedule.<\/p>\n<p>The Thunder (60-16), Spurs (58-18), Lakers (50-26) and Nuggets (49-28) are the other Western teams that have clinched playoff berths.<\/p>\n<p>The Rockets have been a little uneven at times in 2025\/26, but they\u2019re still on pace to win 50-plus games for the second straight season despite playing without\u00a0Fred VanVleet, who suffered a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hoopsrumors.com\/2025\/09\/rockets-fred-vanvleet-sustains-torn-acl.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">torn ACL<\/a> in September. Another key rotation member, Steven Adams, underwent <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hoopsrumors.com\/2026\/01\/steven-adams-undergoing-season-ending-ankle-surgery.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">season-ending ankle surgery<\/a> in January.<\/p>\n<p>Houston currently has the 10th-best offensive rating in the NBA and the sixth-ranked defense. The Rockets are one of six teams in the top 10 in both categories, with the Thunder, Spurs, Pistons, Celtics and Knicks being the others.<\/p>\n<p>Cleveland has a chance to become the fourth Eastern team to clinch a spot in the playoffs if it wins at Golden State on Thursday evening.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Rockets became the fifth Western Conference team to secure a playoff spot on Thursday when Phoenix lost&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":695206,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3794],"tags":[7,292,194,4066,6,211],"class_list":{"0":"post-695205","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston-rockets","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-houston","10":"tag-houston-rockets","11":"tag-houstonrockets","12":"tag-nba","13":"tag-rockets"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116338683311938760","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/695205","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=695205"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/695205\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/695206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=695205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=695205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=695205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}