After a roller coaster ride in the regular season, the Houston Rockets successfully made the final cut of the Western Conference playoff teams and secured the chance to go further in the world's most popular professional basketball league.

The Rockets finished eighth in the West's highly competitive team table with 41 wins and 41 losses to clinch the last and final playoff spot. They will face the conference and the league's top ball squad the Golden State Warriors this weekend for the first round.

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The Leslie Alexander-owned ballclub managed to win their last three games to slink into the postseason after dropping three of the previous four to fall behind the Utah Jazz and into ninth place in the West. However, the Jazz lost their last two games and dropped to 40-42; falling to the ninth spot.

"A lot of people wrote us off, thought we weren't going to make the playoffs and here we are," said James Harden, who scored 38 points in their 116-81 victory against the Sacramento Kings for the team's final regular season game. "We're gonna take it one game at a time. We faced those guys in the Western Conference finals. Obviously they're playing well and we are too."

The Rockets are in the postseason for the fourth consecutive year. They won 56 games last season but failed to replicate an impressive performance they demonstrated a year ago.

The team encountered many ups and downs, with head coach Kevin McHale being fired from his post after losing 7 of their first 11 games played.  J.B. Bickerstaff took over, but the high expectation for the team never became consistent and solid.

"It's a continuation of our season," said Bickerstaff. "We would have sat here at the beginning of the year thinking that making the playoffs wouldn't have been this big of a struggle. We had expectations of the making the playoffs. So now we have to go get busy."

TagsJames Harden, Dwight Howard, houston rockets, Golden State Warriors, Stephen Curry, 2016 nba playoffs, Western Conference