My apologies to all the Houston Rockets players, coach Rick Adelman, general manager Daryl Morey, owner Les Alexander and anybody else connected with the organization.

It was just last week I so cavalierly wrote them off as a fluke and the likely team to slip out of the playoff picture in the rugged Western Conference. Well, following Monday night’s 91-73 humiliation of the Nets, the Rockets became only the fourth team in the history of the NBA to win 19 games in a row. They've tied the 1999-2000 Lakers, and only the 1970-71 Milwaukee Bucks (20) and the 1971-72 Lakers (33) have won more.

All three of those teams won the NBA title, while the Rockets have virtually no shot (hey, I said I was sorry ... but I'm not crazy).

But that’s not the point here.

Nobody could have seen this coming when they were struggling to stay over .500 before the first of the year. But by the end of January, they gained the kind of momentum that few teams ever find. They haven’t lost since Jan. 27 to the Utah Jazz and since Jan. 4, they are 28-3, winning 23 of 24 and going from 10th in the West to just a game out of first (they are in third).

Furthermore, the past seven wins have come since All-Star center Yao Ming went down with a fractured foot that ended his season. Two weeks later, the doomsayers are still scratching their collective heads as the Rockets have suddenly stormed into contention and haven’t just been beating teams, they’ve been slaughtering them -- tying an NBA record with 10 straight double-digit victories.

And they’ve been doing it with defense -- smothering defense -- even without Yao. Of course, everybody looks at Tracy McGrady taking over again, just as he did last season when Yao was down. And McGrady has raised his level of play with clutch shots and passes to make life easier for his teammates. But Monday night against the Nets was a microcosm of how they’ve won, with McGrady leading the charge with a moderate 19 points.

More to the point is the ageless finger-wagging of 7-foot-1 Dikembe Mutombo back in action with five blocks. They held the Nets to 28 points and .209 shooting in the first half and just 30 percent for the game. The Rockets added the tough versatility of Argentinean Luis Scola in the offseason and rookie Carl Landry to the rugged duo of Shane Battier and Chuck Hayes up front.

And really, that’s what they’ve become -- a blue collar group. There is 6-10 Steve Novak, a second-round pick out of Marquette in 2006, coming off the bench to sink a trio of 3-pointers to help the cause Monday night, and Rafer Alston suddenly settling into a dependable point guard role instead of the New York playground legend seeking style points instead of victories.

This alignment of the planets all begins with Adelman, a proven master at finding his hot buttons, and he has jumped to the head of the class in the coach of the year race. In his 17th season as a head coach in the NBA, Adelman, 61, is five wins shy of becoming the 13th coach in NBA history to win 800 regular season games. With the exception of a couple of bad years at Golden State (which until last season was redundant) his resume is dominated by exceptional achievement at Portland and Sacramento. The source of his success has been flexibility -- understanding every team is different and allowing them to play to their strengths.

There was no real reason for him to be fired at Sacramento other than owners Gavin and Joe Maloof wanted a change, but he took the year off to recharge his batteries. And when he was hired to replace Jeff Van Gundy with the Rockets, there were great expectations with what he would do with the combination of Yao and McGrady.

But they struggled early, particularly with erratic point guard play, with Adelman shuttling Alston, rookie Aaron Brooks, Luther Head and Steve Francis in and out trying to find somebody to handle the job. Finally, Alston has embraced it. During the streak he has been particularly solid, averaging 14.7 points and 6.8 assists. Scola, too, has raised his game, and is now getting mentioned for rookie of the year -- averaging 12.5 points and 6.5 rebounds during the streak.

Obviously, it’s the collective effort that has the Rockets continuing to roll. They head to Atlanta Wednesday night with a chance to tie the 1970-71 Milwaukee Bucks for the second most consecutive victories in one season, followed by games against the Bobcats, Lakers and Celtics in the Toyota Center, where they’ve won 13 in a row.

And yet, we don’t know what will happen to their confidence when they finally do lose. And remember, while they were able to jump from 10th to third, they are still only 3½ games ahead of the Warriors in eighth and just six in front of the Nuggets, who are out of the playoffs altogether in ninth.

Because they are doing this with defense and an obvious sense of camaraderie, there is a tighter feel to this team. Van Gundy set up the structure for Adelman, but Adelman’s personality better fits this group. And because of that, they aren’t likely to tumble too far when they come back to earth. It won’t be easy to stay in the top four, and they probably won’t.

But that doesn’t matter now. They’re riding the wave and let’s ride it with them. We don’t get to see something special like this very often, particularly from a blue collar group filled with guys just happy to be there.