Silas in far different boat than the one he boarded less than 3 months ago

Most often, a new head coach inherits a mess of a situation.

Franchises with vacancies at the top tend to be talent-poor teams in need of a rebuild.

Stephen Silas should have been one of the fortunate ones.

After two decades of working his way up the ladder to a position he was overly qualified for, he came to the Rockets, a team with a bona fide superstar and championship dreams. However unrealistic those dreams might have been, the Rock

ets were optimistic.

They have the longest current streak of NBA playoff appearances and have not had a losing season in 15 years.

And when they hired Silas, they had James Harden. And Russell Westbrook.

A mere 77 days into his tenure as head coach, Silas’ two best players had been traded, and the Rockets’ on-paper fortunes had gone from hopeful to horrid.

However unrealistic their belief had been, they have gone from seeing themselves as contenders to a Jim Mora rant.

“Playoffs? Don’t talk about playoffs. You kiddin’ me? Playoffs? I just hope we can win a game.”

While that might be an exaggeration, the Rockets minus Harden, who whined his way out of town, are hardly a team to be reckoned with. They were only 3-6 with a half-hearted Harden.

They didn’t trade for Harden’s replacement — they dealt an All-NBA-level player and received nothing close to that in return — but it was about the best they could do.

The bottom line is that the most valuable elements coming to the Rockets in the trade for The Beard are a couple of draft picks presently in middle school and not even shaving.

Former Rockets coach Jeff Van Gundy meant it as a compliment, but his assessment of the post-Harden Rockets says a lot about what the team was and now is.

“(Does the trade) mean they’re a top-four seed or a championship-caliber team like we’ve grown used to with Harden as the linchpin? Absolutely not. But that doesn’t mean they can’t have a good season and we can’t enjoy watching them play,” Van Gundy told the Chronicle’s David Barron. “You know, there’s nothing wrong with watching a pretty good team get all they can out of their capabilities, and that’s what I’m going to be excited for.”

In other words, at least the Rockets are going to try their darndest.

Aw, they work so hard, and aren’t they cute?

If Silas is as good as we think he is, his squad will be better than expected. But he is playing poker with different cards than he was originally dealt.

That ace-queen he had in the hole is now a 10-8. His head coaching skills are being put to a different test.

“It was very different on the (hiring) press conference day as opposed to today,” Silas said. “Being ready for this position and prepared to tackle problems, or solve them or figure out ways around them, that’s what a head coach does.

“Obviously, things weren’t perfect.”

Nothing this devastating had ever happened so early in a Rockets head coach’s career. Usually, not much happens, or it is something good.

Bill Fitch took the job two weeks after the Rockets won a coin flip for the rights to the No. 1 overall pick, which everyone on Earth knew would be Ralph Sampson. Houston also had the No. 3 pick (Rodney McCray) that year.

A couple of months into Tom Nissalke’s tenure, the Rockets traded to get the No. 1 overall pick and drafted John Lucas.

The closest situation to Silas’ was when Rudy Tomjanovich was named interim coach about three weeks before the team suspended Hakeem Olajuwon and accused him of faking an injury.

Rudy T jokes that he was darn near traumatized by the incident.

Now that we know how it all turned out, it is barely a footnote in Rockets history.

There was only one Dream, and the Rockets figured it would be better to ride through that controversy than take pennies on the dollar to trade him.

Two months later, Tomjanovich was named head coach, and two years later, the Rockets won their first NBA championship.

Unless general manager Rafael Stone pulls off a sweet deal (the Rockets now have some tradeable assets), there will not be a celebratory parade in Silas’ second year.

Get used to it, Rockets fans. Your team is now relegated to being an also-ran.

For now.

The Rockets are in a position they haven’t been in for a long time, but this next era of Rocketball could be temporary, because Stone is hardly done reworking the roster.

Silas hasn’t even had a practice with his new group, and this isn’t the job he thought he took.

Turns out it was a mess of a situation.