The Houston Rockets recently locked up their second postseason berth in as many seasons. The Rockets were able to pull off the feat on Thursday — when they weren’t even playing.<\/p>\n
The Phoenix Suns’ loss to the Charlotte Hornets sealed the deal for the Rockets. And as of this writing, Houston ranks fifth in the Western Conference, with a 48-29 record.<\/p>\n
Houston is seemingly locked in at the fifth spot, as they are 1.5 games back from the fourth-seeded Denver Nuggets and two games ahead of the sixth-seeded Minnesota Timberwolves.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Again, their seeding is essentially set. With that being said, they should consider giving two-time All-Star center Alperen Sengun some rest.<\/p>\n
He’s been banged up throughout the season, which has limited his play and hindered his effectiveness in stretches. He’s clearly been playing with a back injury of late.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Earlier in the season, he missed time with an ankle injury, which he arguably rushed back from. He re-aggravated a pre-existing injury during the Rockets’ recent 119-113 victory over the Milwaukee Bucks, who beared the look of a G-League team.<\/p>\n
The game actually turned out being relatively close. Certainly closer than one would’ve expected.<\/p>\n
The Rockets would be wise to find time to give him some rest, at some point during these last five games. Again, their seed is essentially locked up and confirmed.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And they’ve already made the postseason. And Sengun has already played 68 games, as of this writing, so he’s not at risk of missing the league’s 65-game mandate any longer.<\/p>\n
The Rockets already missed a golden opportunity to rest Sengun during their 140-106 victory over the Utah Jazz on Friday night. They would’ve easily won that game without the Turkish center.<\/p>\n
The game was over after the first quarter, when the Rockets held a 34-22 lead. Although the Rockets have blown sizable leads all season.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Rockets led 107-78 at the start of the fourth quarter. Yet Sengun was still in the game logging minutes.<\/p>\n
So not only did the Rockets not rest Sengun for the Jazz game, they didn’t even give him a lighter workload for the night. Which begs the question of whether Houston’s brass and brain trust will rest him before the playoffs.<\/p>\n
If he’s hurt, it would be wise for the Rockets to get him fully healthy before the postseason starts. However, the only non-contending team on the schedule through Houston’s last five games is the Memphis Grizzlies, which is Houston’s last game.<\/p>\n
Granted, Houston will have one week of rest between their last regular season game and the start of the playoffs, due to the play-in tournament. Perhaps they’ll utilize that time to give Sengun rest<\/p>\n
Regardless, their goal should be trying to get Sengun as healthy as fully possible over the course of the next two weeks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Houston Rockets recently locked up their second postseason berth in as many seasons. The Rockets were able…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":700296,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3794],"tags":[7,292,194,4066,6,211],"class_list":{"0":"post-700295","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\/116354380154894480","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/700295","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=700295"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/700295\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/700296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=700295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=700295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=700295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}