HOUSTON (SportsRadio 610)- Jabari Smith Jr doesn't search out the Western Conference standings, but sometimes he can't avoid seeing them.
"It's hard to pay attention to it right now," Smith said. "I see it pop up every now and then. I see we're in a pretty good spot, but I know we got a lot to improve on and a lot to get better at."
Smith's Rockets now sit in seventh place in the West after Wednesday's 117-104 win over the Memphis Grizzlies, earning their 12th win of the season in their 21st game, a feat that took 50 games to accomplish a season ago, which has Smith encouraged about what's to come.
"We didn't win a lot of games last year, and it's good to just be on the other side right now."
The Rockets didn't have expectations of making the playoffs the last two seasons, but dreadful starts made the unlikely, impossible. As they pass the quarter point of this campaign, the Rockets have put themselves in position to play past the regular season for the first time since 2020, but they understand there's a long way to go.
"We know where we're at," Rockets coach Ime Udoka said before Wednesday's game. "We're trying to improve, and feel we could be higher in the win column, lower in the loss column, but it's pretty early for that. At this point of the season, it's a lot of teams jammed up and one or two games could flip you from the middle of the pack to the end of the pack, and so (we're) more so concentrating on what we're doing instead of looking at the standings this early."
Udoka is right. The West is tight, but his team's current four game winning streak has pushed it to four games up in the loss column over the 11th place Golden State Warriors, which would keep it in the Play-in Tournament, but they are also just two games back in the loss column of Oklahoma City for second place.
The Rockets knew there would be improvement before the season started, though a postseason berth still seemed a bit far-fetched, but while it's still premature to say it's going to happen, a world can be envisioned where the Rockets are playing playoff games this spring.
"That's our goals," Dillon Brooks said. "It takes one game at a time, one day at a time. Keep practicing, keep working on our craft. We got things to clean up every single game, and get better at, but it's in everybody's mind, and you can see it."
