The Rockets catch a schedule break at the absolutely perfect time

The Houston Rockets, so far this season, have had the strangest schedule in the NBA, having played at least one less game than virtually every other team atop the Western Conference.

Yet, this past week, in which the Rockets played five games in seven days (including their first two back-to-backs of the season), showed how vulnerable they might be to brutal stretches in the schedule. Now, however, they will be gifted a lengthy period of rest as a result of their elimination from NBA Cup play, and it couldn't come at a more needed time.

Houston will play just three games over the next 11 days (with two of those teams being the Los Angeles Clippers and the New Orleans Pelicans), giving them time to reset their rotation and heal up before the real grind of the regular season begins.

The Rockets will have time to rest and recuperate before things really heat up

Since the start of the season, the Rockets have looked like one of the most dominant offensive teams in the NBA, sitting near the top of the leaderboards in almost every advanced stat that attempts to measure offensive performance.

Yet, their hot start was also buoyed by one of the lightest schedules in the NBA. Prior to this past week, they had played fewer games than virtually every other team in the league, and, although they had not solely played bottom-feeders, they had only one matchup each against the dominant Oklahoma City Thunder and the Denver Nuggets.

Nevertheless, this past week tested their mettle. They dropped the second half of a back-to-back to the Utah Jazz after blowing them out in the first game, and, with both Steven Adams and Alperen Sengun out, they suffered a brutal loss at the hands of the Dallas Mavericks.

Under normal circumstances, these are games that the team should win, and, given that this was the first tough stretch in their schedule, the losses are forgivable.

Yet, it served as a poignant reminder of a battle that the Rockets will face all season. Both Adams and Kevin Durant are, obviously, vital to the way the team wants to play. Over the course of the season, Adams will need to rest (especially during back-to-backs), and Durant, at age 37, cannot necessarily be expected to be at the top of his game when the team has matchups stacked together like this.

This is not to wave away the issues that plagued Houston in these two losses. Every team will have stretches like this by nature of the NBA schedule, and the Rockets must find a way to avoid dropping easily winnable games if they want to remain near the top of the Western Conference.

Yet, as we near Christmas (the point at which many would argue that the NBA schedule really starts to heat up), the Rockets will, fortuitously, be granted time to get their affairs in order.