Goodrich on Lakers’ 33-Game Winning Streak: “I don’t think it’s going to be broken.”

He was the leading scorer on two of the greatest teams in basketball history – the undefeated 1964 National Champion UCLA Bruins and the 1972 NBA Champion Los Angeles Lakers, the team that owns the league's record 33-game winning streak. So it’s understandable that Hall of Famer and NBA TV analyst Gail Goodrich has watched with great interest (and admiration) as the Rockets have raced to 20 wins in a row (so far).

NBA.com: What impresses you the most about the Rockets’ streak?

Gail Goodrich: First and foremost, the fact that Yao Ming has gone down and they have continued to play at a very high level. In the past they have really struggled when either Yao or Tracy McGrady has gone down. Everybody has stepped up, all the role players – Rafer Alston, Luis Scola and Carl Landry.

McGrady continues to play at a really high level. But everybody has come together here to continue to play at a very high level -- even having to, in effect, change the way they play a little bit, obviously going a little smaller.

In addition, their defense has been excellent. I think they’re second in the league in opponents’ field goal percentage. They are fourth in total points scored against. So they have really done it on the defensive end, and they have also shot the basketball well. Those two things have really been impressive given the absence of Yao Ming.

NBA.com: How long can they keep it going?

Goodrich: That is a good question. Starting Sunday they play some really tough teams. I looked at the schedule. They went all of February undefeated. They are going to have to go all of March and maybe four or five games in April to get to our 33-game win streak.

Next week they have L.A., Boston, the Hornets, who they beat twice, the Warriors and Phoenix. And at the end of the month they have San Antonio. So the schedule gets tougher from here on out.

What has also been impressive is the fact that they have beaten teams by double digits. We did the same thing. I think we had 23 or 24 double-digit wins. We had one overtime game and another time when we had to come from behind in the fourth quarter, but by and large we dominated our opponents. They have essentially done the same thing.

When you start to analyze [the streak], people say, “Well, they haven’t played a lot of good teams on the road.” That’s true. But 20 victories isn’t shabby. I take my hat off to them. They have surprised a lot of people. Again, with Yao Ming and Tracy McGrady on the court at the same time, they present a lot of problems for opponents.

NBA.com: Will the Lakers' streak be broken?

Goodrich: I don’t think it’s going to get broken. Twenty is outstanding, but the Rockets still have a long way to go -- and given the schedule they have and how tough the Western Conference is, I think it is going to be very difficult. I am a firm believer that records are made to be broken, but this one I don’t think is going to get broken.

NBA.com: With the ’72 streak, at what point did you sense you were on to something special? And compare the media coverage of the Lakers streak then versus Houston’s streak now.

Goodrich: The media started to make something of it when we broke the Bucks' record of 20 from the previous season. But people also started talking when we surpassed the Knicks' record of 18.

I don’t think that we really focused at all on the streak. We went out and played, and it’s a cliché, but we played one at a time. Bill Sharman was a coach who stressed consistency and preparation for every game and we really did play one game at a time in a sense.

When it was all over, we then realized what we had really done, understanding that it was significant, but it wasn’t our goal. We were still concentrating on the playoffs and winning a championship because that was our first championship. The 33 games was just icing on the cake. I don’t think it really hit us until it was all over.

I can’t get in the heads of the Rockets here, but the one parallel that appears is that they seem to be playing with a lot of confidence. They seem to have a swagger about them and I suspect they believe they can beat anyone. If they play the way they are capable of, they can do that. When we played, we played with a lot of confidence. We thought we were better than everybody else and that’s the way we played. The confidence really sort of bordered on a little bit of cockiness. It’s a fine line. You don’t want to be cocky. You want to respect your opponent and you have to prepare for them. But I think we were a very confident basketball team, and that confidence built game to game to game. We felt we could figure out a way to win if we weren’t on our A game. I suspect Houston has that same kind of confidence that is building with this streak.

NBA.com: When Lakers streak ended in Milwaukee, some players were quoted as saying that the Bucks didn’t win the game, the Lakers lost it.

Goodrich: We didn’t play very well. We really didn’t. We didn’t shoot well. We didn’t defend well. It was a bad ballgame for us. That said, Milwaukee had a very, very good team. You have to give them credit. They played a good basketball team and they beat us soundly. But it was not one of our better games. I think everyone knew that it was one of those games where we didn’t play well and we ran up against a good basketball team.