Entering their first home game of the month tonight against the woeful Toronto Raptors, the Rockets are 38-22, two losses behind last season's pace.

One would think this squad is better than last year's, right? Probably.

Still, the Rockets have a long way to go and a short time to get there if they are to end their embarrassingly long playoff-series victory drought (12 years).

Aaron Brooks needs to learn how to close out games. Ron Artest needs to convince himself he doesn't have to take every shot down the stretch. Rick Adelman probably needs to be told that while Brooks and Kyle Lowry on the floor together in the fourth quarter might work against the likes of Minnesota, he shouldn't try that against the big boys.

The team needs to be reminded that Yao Ming is its best player. Its best option. And the tall guy.

Don't laugh. Sometimes people have to be reminded just how big the 7-6 center is.

"We had a tough time with - you know, Yao's huge," Minnesota coach Kevin McHale revealed to the media after the Rockets rolled his Timberwolves on Sunday.

As if part of a cult, all the Rockets say: "It all starts with Yao, and it all goes through Yao." Then you watch the games, and that is not the case.

If Yao isn't the focal point of the Rockets' offense, Brooks and Lowry have as much hope of leading this team to playoff glory as Brooks and Dunn.

It was good, but ...

February was a hectic month for the Rockets. A strange month. A good month.

Yet doesn't it seem as if opportunity knocked and they didn't open the door?

Adelman said it would be crazy to expect his squad to roll off 22 straight wins as it did last year, but before the season began he was giving a wink-wink, non-nod at how sweet February could be.

Sweet it was, but not real sugar sweet. More like that fake stuff in the pastel-colored packages.

The Rockets have won 10 of their past 13 games and are fourth in the conference playoff standings, trailing No. 2 seed San Antonio by 21/2 games. If a team won 10 of every 13 games throughout a season, it would finish with 63 wins. That would be a heck of a season.

But for a team with high hopes, this was a weird 10-of-13. (Even with the Tracy McGrady distraction and the Rafer Alston trade.) All three losses - as well as the Rockets' past six defeats - have come to teams with losing records.

Ten teams in the Eastern Conference have 29 or fewer wins. None has a record bet-ter than .500. The Rockets (38-22) have losses to each.

On the other hand, the Rockets have victories over each of the top five teams in the East (Cleveland, Boston, Orlando, Atlanta and Miami).

"Some wins are bigger than others; they are that night, at least. But they're all important," Artest said last week. "Every loss is the same ... bad."

Pressure is on them

It is at the point in the season when the "every game counts" mantra is a popular phrase despite its illogical implication that losses now count more in the standings than do losses in November. Right now, every one does count more psychologically because you're checking the standings daily, but they all count.

Seemingly meaningless losses to the also-rans last month could mean the difference between playing the first two games of a playoff series at Toyota Center (where the Rockets have a nine-game winning streak) or on the road (where they've lost four of the last five and 10 of the last 14 and are 14-16 on the season).

With the team playing road games against possible playoff foes Utah (twice), Denver, New Orleans and San Antonio, we will learn a lot more about these Rockets in March than we did in February.

With only 22 games remaining, we can start talking playoffs. We just have no idea how well these Rockets will do in them. We don't know who they are because this team is still learning how to play together.

jerome.solomon@chron.com