After dreadful season-ending loss at home, the Rockets have no shortage of questions about their future

HOUSTON — A few hours after the dust had settled from a seismic Game 3 collapse, when the quiet consumed the halls of Toyota Center, disenchanted team governor Tilman Fertitta, surrounded by friends and family, trudged toward the loading dock.

A pair of hands calmly rested on Fertitta’s back, an attempt to lift the spirits of the typically cheerful 68-year-old as he embarked on the same gloomy path he had become all too familiar with. The previous instances, two separate Game 7 losses seven years apart, represented a franchise at different checkpoints but in the same underlying condition. And while Game 3 wasn’t the ultimate undoing of Houston’s season — a listless, languid effort in Friday’s 98-78 Game 6 loss to a Los Angeles Lakers team without Luka Doncic ended its season — it served as an inflection point; a crumbling at the season’s most critical juncture, a coaching chasm and fatal roster flaws.

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“Everybody’s disappointed,” Rockets head coach Ime Udoka said following his team’s second consecutive first-round exit. “Not what we expected coming into the game tonight or the series in general. We all thought we’d be taking it back for Game 7. But to your point, a tough night for a lot of guys. It’s tough when a lot of guys are struggling like that, and we need somebody to step up.”

(Henry Russell/Yahoo Sports illustration)

What had begun as a season of optimism, excitement and expectations has ended in yet another embarrassing postseason defeat, one that has sparked even more questions about the flexibility and viability of a franchise that has oscillated between development and contention, a risky two-timeline approach that is rarely successful at basketball’s highest level.

“It feels like two years in a row in the playoffs getting behind the eight ball a little bit,” Udoka said.

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In the days leading up to the start of the playoffs, the mood around the team was upbeat and confident. Houston’s players, who had huddled together to watch the final day of the regular season — which included a Spurs win over the Nuggets, solidifying the Lakers as their…

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Author : Kelly Iko

Publish date : 2026-05-02 13:14:00

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