Ben DuBose

The Rockets LaunchPod starts now.

Welcome aboard.

Ben DuBose here, Paolo Alves there.

Welcome back to another episode of the Rockets LaunchPod presented by Clutch fans and with support from Sports Talk 790, official flagship radio station of your Houston Rockets.

It's Wednesday, the 18th of February.

The Rockets are 33-20, the number four seed in the Western Conference.

They have not played in a week due to the All-Star break.

That will soon change.

They're back in action Thursday night in Charlotte.

We'll talk about that a little bit.

Although today's show will be more bigger picture trends since we haven't had a game in over a week.

There's certainly some things to talk about, including recent developments.

We'll get to that shortly.

But in terms of, I guess, the scope of our discussions, I want this to be more macro than micro to sort of preview the back half of the regular season, the upcoming playoff run, and ultimately what makes this a successful season for the Rockets.

So we'll get back into more micro game-by-game analysis next week when we have a few games to react to.

Now we've had this break.

The Rockets have gotten to recharge.

We've gotten to recharge.

I want to look more holistically at what needs to happen over the final 29 games of the regular season, the playoffs beyond that, and what ultimately is going to lead us to feel optimistic about the years ahead versus perhaps needing to make significant changes this summer.

We'll get into all of that shortly, but Paolo, I'll start you with this.