The Rockets’ 5-game losing streak doesn’t change anything

The Houston Rockets hold the league’s longest losing streak with five straight defeats. I still believe they are the greatest non-LeBron James threat to the Warriors since Golden State’s hegemony began. These two sentences aren’t mutually exclusive.

It’s weird to see the Rockets dropping this many games in a row — strange, bizarre, abnormal, all those words. But it’s not worrisome, or troubling, not yet and likely not ever. Houston is still 25-9 this season, boasting the second-best record in the league, after all.

Still, even Chris Paul’s return on Friday couldn’t stop the bleeding, as Houston lost 121-103 to the Washington Wizards in a game where they looked listless. It comes one game after a ridiculous loss to the Boston Celtics featuring two Marcus Smart flops to close out the game and a 26-point comeback from the scrappiest team in the league.

What has happened to the Rockets over these past two weeks? We can explain.

It hasn’t been sparkling competition, but it’s not like Houston is getting blown out game after game.

James Harden dropped consecutive 51-point games against the two Los Angeles teams, despite two losses. It’s not often that a player does that — Kobe Bryant was the last one — and it’s amazing that Houston lost them both. The Thunder were motivated at home on Christmas Day, and the Rockets were still within five points.

And then there was that absurd Celtics game mentioned above. A 26-point comeback — or in this case, a 26-point blown lead and loss — isn’t something that can be explained. It hardly ever happens. Chalk it up to the incredible abnormalities of an NBA season, if you will, because there isn’t any more logical reason.

Given the emotional highs and lows of that game, it’s no surprise that the Rockets came out flat against Washington and ended up losing that game. They just missed too many decent looks.

Mike D’Antoni has always preferred a short rotation, but we saw how that hurt the Rockets’ last playoff series when James Harden ended up exhausted against the San Antonio Spurs. It was troubling, for that reason, to see the Rockets break out an eight-man rotation against the Thunder on Christmas Day. Houston is a team with enormous aspirations, and while they would love the No. 1 seed, they can’t gun for that and tire out their most important players in the process.

But you feel for D’Antoni, because the injuries have exposed the Rockets’ lack of depth. Both Luc Richard Mbah a Moute missed the Christmas game, and Clint Capela missed the two matchups since then. On Friday, with Nene out with a minor eye injury, the Rockets found themselves starting P.J. Tucker and Ryan Anderson as their nominal big men.

D’Antoni turned to Zhou Qi, the team’s second round pick, for a seven-minute stretch in the second quarter. It, uh, could not have gone worse. Qi started with an offensive foul, committed a goaltending violation immediately after, badly missed two three-pointers, and was on the wrong end of a Tomas Satoransky poster dunk.

Houston’s depth problem was bad enough that they signed Gerald Green off the streets, who literally joined the team with only a backpack in his possession and played 38 minutes in the past two games combined. Green actually makes a lot of sense in Houston — he’s an explosive scoring wing who won’t hesitate to shoot and is quite good at it, too. Still, his sudden signing shows that Houston was lacking.

This problem makes sense after the Paul trade, which sent seven players back to the Clippers and at least four who had been solid contributors. But it remains a problem if a few Rockets are out at any given time.

The Rockets have lost five in a row, but who cares. We’ve seen what this team can be when healthy, and even what they were without Paul to start this season. That team has a real chance against the Warriors if things break right for them. And if they aren’t healthy, then it’s over, and that’s just the reality of playing against Golden State with Kevin Durant. The only way that the depth problem becomes a playoff problem is if the stars wear down late in the season like last year.

Until April, this is all a side show for the Rockets. Can they break the all-time three-point shooting records that they set last year? (Yes, they will.) Can they finally earn James Harden his MVP trophy? (Possibly.) Will they snare the top overall seed, or will they need to topple the Thunder or the Spurs before reaching Golden State? (Who knows.)

If you’re worrying about the Rockets — don’t. They’ll be fine.