P.J. Tucker, Rockets Have 'Tournament' Mindset Ahead of NBA Restart

There are few, if any, conventional aspects of the NBA's restart in Orlando. The mass quarantine of players and coaches has created a season unlike any other in league history, and additional alterations will come into play once games begin. With no home-court advantage and a potential play-in game for each conference, 2019-20 will certainly be remembered as an outlier. 

For Houston forward P.J. Tucker, the NBA's restart isn't quite a resumption of the 2019-20 season. Tucker views the contests in Orlando as effectively an extended tournament.

"It can't feel like the same season," Tucker told the media in a Zoom call on Wednesday. "It doesn't feel like a new season, either. It's like we're having a tournament, and that's how I'm trying to think about it. We've got eight games for seeding, then the playoffs we'll go at it."

It's been a rocky start for the Rockets in Orlando. Russell Westbrook is not with the team as of Thursday morning after testing positive for COVID-19, and James Harden didn't arrive in in Orlando until Tuesday night. Harden is expected to join Houston's practice on Thursday, which should give the Rockets a boost, per Tucker. 

"[Harden] is our team, he's our captain," Tucker said on Tuesday. "He runs the ship, and everyone else fills in the space around him. ...He raises the stakes every time he steps on the floor, and that's what we love about him. We know what we're going to get from No. 13."

Tucker is in his ninth NBA season and his third with the Rockets. The Texas product has emerged as an NBA iron man in recent years, appearing in all of Houston's 228 regular-season games since 2017-18. 

The Rockets enter the NBA's restart No. 6 in the Western Conference at 40–24.