Ben DuBose

But if you get a better version of these young players, then your ceiling is even higher than it was before.

So I guess, Paolo, I'm curious your thoughts on that.

The juxtaposition of, you know, the lowlights defensively, but now these young guys potentially taking steps forward and what that means for the overall ceiling of this team.

I do think, though, that in the interim, what we're seeing from the variable guys, the X-Factors, and Reid specifically, against the Nuggets, against the Spurs, Reid was tremendous in basically all three of those games against the Nuggets, including some high-leverage possessions in that game they had stolen by the amend, quote-unquote, foul of Tim Hardaway Jr.

And now we see what...

Reed did against the Spurs.

He largely did it the first game in San Antonio back in November as well.

It's just he gave some of it back, especially the clutch defensively when he got targeted.

This time he didn't give it back defensively.

And so for me, I'm seeing a lot of hope that this version of Reed can potentially get the Rockets to the front of the line behind Oklahoma City.

Now, can you beat the Thunder four times out of seven?

That's a different discussion.

Something's going to have to change with the framework of the team.

Either you get Fred Van Fleet back, or there's some sort of significant trade, or maybe Reed takes a sustained leap forward.

Something needs to change with the framework to get to the level of OKC, but we sort of knew that going into the year.

This is a historically great Oklahoma City team.

Every team in the NBA is dealing with that.

I guess for me, especially coming off that 10-10 stretch through 20 games, I'm taking a little bit of consolation in that I don't see any team in this 2-6 range.

We saw what the Rockets did in L.A.

against the Lakers on Christmas, just systematically destroying them.