Paulo Alves

Like when they lost those games in December to lesser teams, I was pissed.

I was blowing up our WhatsApp chat.

I was just so convinced they were better than that.

And it was just an inexplicably bad showing or just really unlucky, something like that.

And these days, I just sort of shrug my shoulders.

Like, I did have a very brief hashtag HoustonSports moment when Tari's buzzer beater was a tenth of a second late.

But logically, I know the bigger issue there is that the game shouldn't have been closed to begin with.

So what that's led me to, I think, at least for me, I need to reset my expectations a little bit.

And perhaps we all do.

It's certainly not to say the season is over, that they can't win a championship.

Not saying anything like that.

There's still 48 games left in the regular season.

We're talking about two 17-game samples here.

Those are basically each a fifth of the regular season.

And so you've still got three more of those segments to go.

So it is entirely possible that this last 17-game stretch that's been just pure mediocrity, maybe it's the exception to the rule.

Shingun should be back in the next few days.

Maybe Fred comes back by the playoffs and defies the odds.

DFS is going to play more minutes.

He should get better.