Okay, so here’s the deal. I was messing around trying to predict how the Houston Rockets would do this season, just for fun, you know?
First, I gathered a bunch of data. I’m talking stats from last season, player performance this year so far, injury reports – the whole nine yards. I hit up a few sports websites, ESPN, that kinda stuff, and also dug around on some more obscure stats sites. Gotta get all the angles, right?
Then, I started looking at trends. Which players were improving? Which ones were slacking? How did they perform against specific teams? I even tried to factor in coaching changes and stuff like that. It was a real headache, let me tell you.
Next up was trying out a few different prediction models. This is where it got kinda nerdy. I used a simple weighted average for some factors, like points per game and rebounds, but I also tried some more complicated stuff. I even messed around with a basic machine learning thing I found online, feeding it all the data and seeing what it spit out. Didn’t really understand half of it, but hey, I tried!
I compared my predictions against some expert opinions too. You know, the guys on TV who get paid to talk about this stuff. It was interesting to see where I agreed with them and where I thought they were totally off base. Usually, they were way more optimistic than me.
After all that, I came up with my final prediction: I reckon they’ll finish somewhere in the middle of the Western Conference. Maybe sneak into the play-in tournament if they’re lucky. I don’t see them making a serious playoff run, though. They’re just too inconsistent. Some nights they look amazing, other nights they can’t hit the broad side of a barn.
And finally, I kept tracking their games to see how my prediction held up. It was a fun little project. Am I right? Wrong? Only time will tell. But hey, that’s the fun of it, right?
