20????

If someone had asked me before the start of the season which NBA team had the best chance of winning 20 games in a row, I would have listed these teams, in this order:

1. Boston--The Eastern Conference is embarrassingly bad.
2. Detroit--The Eastern Conference is embarrassingly bad.

That's it. I would have laughed at the notion of any Western Conference team being able to pull it off. "The conference is too deep," I would have stated authoritatively in my best NBA expert voice. Well, the Houston Rockets have done the impossible, tying the second longest winning streak in NBA history last night with a tough win over the Atlanta Hawks. While they are a long way from the '71-'72 Lakers 33 game streak, this streak is nothing short of amazing, especially when one considers that they have played the last eight without Yao Ming. Also, Tracy McGrady is having his lowest scoring output (22.1 ppg) since the '99-'00 season with Toronto (15.4 ppg), his assists are down from last year, and his rebounding is well below his career average. It is not clear how this team is within one game of the best record of the best conference the NBA has seen in quite some time. This team cannot win the title without Yao Ming, but they are the story in the NBA right now. In somewhat related news, the Mighty C's of Boston won their 10th in a row with a thrashing of the lowly Supersonics. This is the first such streak since '85-'86 when the Celtics, interestingly enough, beat the Houston Rockets in the NBA Finals.

My current projection: Celtics over Spurs