How going down 3-1 to the Lakers changed Alperen Sengun, Rockets for good originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
The Houston Rockets are hanging on by a thread. Coach Ime Udoka may have avoided the NBA Playoffs sweep in Game 4 against the Los Angeles Lakers but this does not mean that the odds are not stacked in their favor anymore. They are still down 3-1 in the series but this apparently changed Alperen Sengun in great ways that he did not fathom before.
There is not a single team to have ever win after being down 3-0 in the NBA Playoffs. It has happened 159 times in history and being down three games usually means that the Rockets will have to pack their bags soon. If looked at the grander scheme of things, Coach Ime Udoka and the Rockets have won a single game which means they are only down 3-1 now. The sample size starts to be more favorable now since 13 teams in the NBA Playoffs have gone on to erase a deficit using this perspective.
Sengun posits that a lot of negative noise has come out of the Rockets having this large of a deficit against the Lakers. He posits that Coach Udoka and the rest of the team do not particularly care about what is said of them. Moreover, there is also feeling of being more strong than ever for the whole of the organization, via Mirin Fader of The Athletic.
"If you’re doing this business, you’ve got to be really strong mentally, because it’s not easy. There’s a lot of stuff going on on the court. You don’t want to lose. You lose. There’s a lot of games, you can have a bad game. And it’s social media. Even if you say you don’t care, you care at some point. So stuff like that, I think, always make me a stronger person... This just was making me work harder," Sengun said.
The Rockets' 115-96 Game 4 win might only be the start of what might be the first NBA Playoffs series where a team down 3-0 finally wins. Regardless of the outcome, Rockets fans can take solace on the fact that they have Coach Udoka and Sengun who are only coming out stronger in this Lakers series.