With outside help, Rockets blast up West standings on Sunday’s off day

With helpful results on Sunday’s NBA scoreboard, the Rockets moved up to the No. 3 spot in the West and are only a half-game back of No. 2.

The Houston Rockets didn’t have a game Sunday, but they may have still felt like winners based on results elsewhere in the NBA and how they impacted the race for seeding in the 2020 Western Conference playoffs.

The Dallas Mavericks (19-10) and Los Angeles Clippers (22-10) blew leads of 30 points and 18 points, respectively, in close losses Sunday at Toronto and Oklahoma City.

Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Lakers (24-6) were blown out by 24 points at Denver (20-8), representing their third consecutive defeat. LeBron James is out at the moment with a thoracic muscle strain in his rib cage area, as well as a nagging groin issue, according to ESPN.

It all resulted in a tremendous off day for the Rockets, who improved to 20-9 themselves with Saturday’s win at Phoenix.

The losses by the Mavs and Clippers pushed them behind Houston in the Western Conference standings, moving the Rockets to the West’s No. 3 seed. They’re only a half-game behind the Nuggets for the No. 2 seed, and suddenly just three back in the loss column of the Lakers for No. 1.

The Rockets and Lakers have yet to play any of their three head-to-head meetings of the 2019-20 season, so there’s ample opportunity for Houston to make a further push in the weeks and months ahead.

It’s quite a turn from just one week ago, when the Rockets were in the No. 5 spot and six games back of the Lakers in the loss column. They also had more losses than the Mavs and Clippers.

Now, after a 3-0 week, Houston has cut its deficit to the Lakers in half while leapfrogging both of the other two teams.

There’s a very long way to go, of course, with most teams only through approximately 30 games of the 82-game regular season. In other words, we’re still about 10 games out from even approaching the halfway point.

But the past week’s results are a good reminder of how quickly the standings can change — especially in the West, where the top six teams of the Lakers, Nuggets, Rockets, Clippers, Mavs, and Utah Jazz could be tightly bunched in the weeks ahead.

For the Rockets to continue their upward move, they’ll need to continue winning games at a high rate. They’ve currently won three games in a row and nine of 12, with Monday night’s game at Sacramento (12-17) offering their next opportunity to keep the momentum rolling.

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