NO FAVORS FROM SCHEDULE
D’Antoni & Co. will be tested immediately, with results from first 20 games a good barometer for rest of season
Admit it: You’re intrigued. Fascinated would be going too far.
Captivated — a complete stretch.
But personally intrigued from a sporting perspective? Yeah, that’s it.
What are these reconstructed Rockets actually going to look like? How many points will they put up a night? Do they have a 50-point quarter in them? Will Mike D’Antoni deserve his “D,” thanks to Jeff Bzdelik’s dirty work. Will James “Points Guard” Harden be the best offensive player in the NBA — step aside, Steph Curry and Kevin Durant — now that Superman has flown away?
We still should be figuring out if this is a 45- or (gasp) 50-win team in mid-April.
But some of the most critical answers in 2016-17 will arrive almost as quickly as a D’Antoni fast break. And if the Dwightless dance is off beat from the start, Harden’s new-look Rockets could be out of step all season.
2-1 and then watch out
An extended exhibition field trip to China tipped off the Rockets’ season away from home. It has been difficult to see this team up close, let alone get a true feel for just how fluid it will be on opening night.
“This has been a long preseason, man,” said forward Ryan Anderson, who fought off the travel blues by joking he hopes to shoot 90 percent from 3-point land in D’Antoni’s wideopen attack.
Keep the bus warm, Clutch. Because the Rockets’ initial 20 regular-season games — almost a quarter of the full schedule — will see life at Toyota Center as a distant memory.
First, it’s the Lakers and Mavericks on the road, then an Oct. 30 home opener against little ol’ Dallas.
I’m in a giving mood as I type this, so I’ll let the Rockets be 2-1 after D’Antoni’s Houston debut.
Then the real world kicks in the front door.
Kerouac would feel at home
November begins with a fivegame trip. The end of that month is bridged with December via another five-game journey.
By the time an overloaded Harden could be wearing down for the first time, the Rockets will have played 14 of their initial 20 contests on the road.
Only Jack Kerouac would get a kick out of such a chaotic trip.
“They’re not making it easy,” D’Antoni said.
Eric Gordon was more succinct: “It’s crazy.”
I learned long ago in this sports world not to “play the schedule.” Think you have it all figured out before the first game and the names and numbers are upended midway through the slate. But there’s a reason key Rockets and the coach who’ll guide them have been trying to figure out how they ended up with this mess ever since the NBA gift-wrapped its 2016-17 calendar.
I haven’t even mentioned the teams Harden and Co. will play from Wednesday through Dec. 2, which is the best part.
At Cleveland, New York, At- lanta, San Antonio, Oklahoma City, Portland, Utah and Golden State, among others. Hosting the Spurs, Blazers, Jazz and Raptors.
What if Pat Beverley needs a little more time to get right?
What if Harden misses multiple games with the unthinkable: an injury?
What if D’Antoni’s offense is randomly uneven, Anderson and Gordon revert to their bad New Orleans days or Bzdelik’s defense literally is a season-long work in progress?
Deal with it as team tries to fit together on the fly.
It’s a gantlet from the tip. It’s Harden carrying everyone and everything on his back, all while trying to survive November.
“It concerns me in the fact that everybody would love to have a great start,” D’Antoni said. “We have a hard start. But I think our character and our culture and our guys know they’re going to hang in there no matter what.
“We will deal with whatever we have to deal with. We’ve got a hard schedule, so that means we’re going to have to be ready — and I think we are. Let’s see what happens and go from there.”
There was no “go from there” last season. There was just falling apart.
Those Rockets weren’t ready and Kevin McHale knew it. Funny thing, because he had an ax in his back after just 11 games.
The 2015-16 losers never were fully into it or committed, and all those blowouts and first-quarter no-shows were damning proof.
Lots of issues, but no quit
I question this team’s depth. It lacks experience at critical positions and replacing Howard won’t be as easy some believe. Team D will be a season-long question mark. Harden has to wear down at some point, right?
But I don’t see these Rockets quitting. D’Antoni and his new Steve Nash have way too much to prove.
The West is mostly up for grabs, if you ignore that Golden State is a Cold War superpower.
The 2016-17 Rockets begin life as intriguing. If they can survive their initial 20 games, the Harden-D’Antoni show should be worth watching all season.
“We have good enough chemistry and … we’re going to do better than what people think,” Gordon said. “I think we’re going to be fine.”
I’ll see how I feel about this team in December. brian.smith@chron.com twitter.com/chronbriansmith