The Rockets won, improving their playoff odds to higher than the 2.3% it stood at this afternoon.  We’ll need to keep an eye on the development with Phoenix and Utah, but for tonight, in my eyes, the big story was the benching of Kyle Lowry. The team’s former MVP did not see a single minute in the second half.  We asked McHale about this and, as you just heard, he responded, he was “just trying to win a game.”  We did not get a chance to talk to Kyle.

Also interesting were McHale’s comments on Marcus Morris.  They provide a little bit of insight into why Morris may not have gotten much time this season. If you joined me on Twitter, I raved about Morris’ offensive arsenal after the forward scored six points in the second quarter including a beautiful turnaround from the corner.  I asked McHale about Morris’ stint tonight, expecting a positive response, but instead, he pointed out the mental errors the rookie forward made on the defensive end.

I see offense.  But McHale, needing to win, can’t afford defensive miscues. Mental lapses might be the one thing coaches tolerate least.  That’s why guys like Shane Battier and Patrick Patterson (this year) are still held in such high esteem despite their apparent offensive inabilities.

It will be interesting to see what happens with Lowry.  Tonight, combined with the shouting match during the Denver game, combined with the Dragic free agency situation makes me think it’s a safe bet Kyle will be dealt in the offseason.

Dirk finished with 35 after scoring just 4 points in the first half.  Vince Carter turned back the clock, keeping Dallas in it in the first half, including a pair of uncontested dunks.  Jason Terry was Jason Terry and Jason Kidd hit some timely 3′s.

The good guys were led by Goran Dragic and Courtney Lee who combined for 36 points.  Luis Scola (18 points) had some beautiful moves inside.  But the most impressive contributor by far was Marcus Camby, listed as a game-time decision, who logged 37 grueling minutes, grimacing in pain with each motion.  The old man finished with 17 boards in total, adding to my amazement and cementing the axiom that gifted specialists are the one breed which enjoy longevity in basketball.

As things technically aren’t completely over, I’ll save the brunt of the big picture discussion for next week.  (You never want to be the guy writing the obituary for the dead guy that wakes up in the operating room.)  But I share your frustration. What can you really do?  The only thing that saves what has transpired this past week as going down as the most epic collapse in Houston sports history is the fact that sadly, it didn’t even really matter: no one gave them a chance in the postseason to begin with and most in the city didn’t even care.

I’m searching for a silver lining but there really are none to be found.  Bill and Bull ‘explained’ after the game that experiences like this were necessary and that from it, the team would grow and get better, a sentiment with which I heartily disagree.  ’Learning experiences’ are the story for teams with cemented nucleus’ (nuclei?) around which they plan to build around and keep for the long haul. That’s not the case here where it’s up in the air if even the two biggest contributors will return and pretty much any and everyone will be on the block.

But there will be plenty of time for reflection upon this season once it officially ends.

For now, the team gets back at it at New Orleans tonight.  It probably doesn’t matter.

I’m now seriously starting to wonder if it might be better to just keep our pick rather than back into the playoffs by default.  I just don’t know at this point.  Knowing this team, I could see them, after all of this, still upsetting Oklahoma City in the first round.  Nothing would shock me at this point.

Goran Dragic and Chandler Parsons led the way for the good guys with 21 apiece.  Courtney Lee chipped in 18.  For the Nugets, Arron Afflalo and Ty Lawson combined for 51.

After the game, many wondered why Sam Dalembert, after having blocked 7 shots up to that point, did not see time in the final frame.  Kevin McHale closed the game with a lineup of Dragic-Lee-Parsons-Patterson-Scola, or, more amiably known around these parts as “Scola at the 5.”  I sort of understand the decision.  I discovered earlier tonight, via some snooping on 82games.com that Patterson leads the entire league in crunch time +/-; and of course it makes sense to send out Scola to fill the need for a post threat.  Still, it seems nothing good has ever come from this lineup.  If the team misses the postseason, we will not forget its evil.

Most interesting was Kyle Lowry’s absence from the game in the deciding minutes.  To be honest, his return seems to have been a factor in the team’s poor play.  A unit that was once in sync no longer seems to have defined roles…

From my vantage point, this game was lost because, in the third quarter, the Rockets stopped running the high screen and roll with which they usually have success.  Kevin McHale said that the Suns began packing the paint with what he called “a soft shell.”  As the Rockets did not hit shots, the Suns stayed in the shell.  I asked Goran about this after the game, but his response did not offer much clarity: he said that he had to make the pass after coming off the screen as the Suns were trapping him with two players.

In the first quarter, the Rockets would run Dragic around a Camby high-post screen.  Dragic would then either get all the way to the lane or kick back out to Camby who would initiate from the high post.  Camby would then either find a cutter–sometimes Dragic–or swing it to a flashing Luis Scola, either in the post or on the wing.  It was textbook Rockets basketball.

In the third, the Rockets completely went away from this, running various ISO sets, sometimes even posting up Patrick Patterson.  It’s when the team is at its worst.  I still don’t understand what happened.  Why do they go away from the motion offense?  I didn’t see any adjustment by the defense that warranted the switch.  Weren’t they trapping the point guard all along?

In any event, after a 4-0 road trip, the Rockets lose another backbreaker at home.  If they miss the postseason, they’ll have only themselves to blame.  They control their own destiny at this point.

The Rockets again, like Wednesday night, made a furious comeback, but it was for naught.  They got back into it with a small ball lineup that allowed them to work the ball around the perimeter after an initial Dragic-Scola pick and roll.  Chase Budinger and Chandler Parsons did damage from the wings.

While the lineup did bring the Rockets back, the team had zero paint protection as they gave up some costly points in the paint near the end.  “Scola at the 5” worked on one end but hurt on the other.  Still, it’s probably hard to blame the coaching decision as that lineup did bring the Rockets back into the game.

Marcus Camby had probably the oddest stat line of the game, grabbing 18 rebounds in the first half, but zero in the second.  In fact, he didn’t see a minute in the fourth quarter.  After the game, he said it was the coach’s decision.

The team must now find a way to regroup after yet another backbreaking loss to a playoff contender.  They will have to find ways to beat the Nuggets, Hornets, Mavs, or Heat. Luckily, they take to the road where perhaps, they find greatest comfort.

The other major storyline in this one was the battle of mentor-mentee in front of a national audience for a final playoff spot.  Nash, at 38, clawing for a last chance, against Dragic, beginning his career as a star, trying to lead his team to the second season.  Nash finished with 18 and 10 assists.  Dragic had 22 and 7.

Watching closely, the contrast in styles was evident.  Both players were masterful in the pick and roll, but Dragic would bull his way to the hoop with long strides while Nash would get crafty with a low dribble.  Late in the first half, when Phoenix ran its offense from the high key through Nash, allowing him to hit cutters with one handed standing passes, one could see how far Dragic would have to go.  Nash is a two time MVP for a reason.

On one particular play in the third, Nash drove and pushed off Dragic with a stiff forearm, sending him to the floor.  He then nailed a jumper.  At the other end, Dragic drove, stepped back, faked the shot drawing Nash off his feet, and then leaned in for the scoop shot, drawing the foul.  The pair were an absolute joy to watch.

This was the most disappointing loss of the year.  A win tonight would have pretty much clinched the playoffs giving the team its first appearance in three years.  Instead of looking up at the homecourt chase, after a 4-0 road trip, the Rockets are back in a dead tie with the Mavs and Nuggets for the 8th seed.  So it goes for the Rockets this season.  They are what they are.  A pretty good team that has wildly overachieved in the face of adversity but not anything close to a contender.

From the start, the Rockets came out flat and got hit early.  By the time they climbed back into it in the fourth, it was too late.  They had run out of gas.  The effort it took to cut down an 18 point deficit did them in and shots stopped falling.

Just extremely, extremely disappointing to see the team come out so flat in such a big game.  But perhaps my expectations have become unreasonable.

I was thinking earlier today, on my drive to Toyota Center, about the Rockets’ offense: top 10 for pretty much the entire season, I thought back on the days when the team would go entire quarters in search of a basket, stubbornly trying to force-feed Yao in the post against fronting defenders.  I smiled thinking, “gone are those days.”  Ironic because the Rockets went ice cold tonight.

Chase Budinger went 2-11 giving the Rockets pretty much nothing.  If Kevin Martin is able to make it back, would he be better in that spot in the rotation?  You could go with Dragic, Lee, Lowry, Martin, Parsons as your perimeter with Camby, Patterson, Scola, and Dalembert upfront.  Given that Dalembert played only ten minutes tonight, and that coaches typically size down their rotations to 8 in the second season, I wouldn’t be shocked to see Dally ousted altogether from regular minutes and only thrown in for spot minutes.  Quite the fall from grace for the former starter.

The good: it seems Kyle Lowry is fully back.

Most disheartening about Monday’s actually tedious drag of a contest between the Rockets and Orlando Magic was the extension of Kevin Martin’s slump past his miserable preseason, a situation seemingly spurred by the cancelled deal that sent him and several other Rockets to the New Orleans Hornets for about an hour, apparently the exact amount of time necessary to frustrate Martin into inefficiency. The Rockets faithful can comfort themselves by Martin’s sudden appearance as a functioning basketball player Thursday night, almost single-handedly dropping the guillotine upon the wizened necks of the Spurs in the second quarter. His three-ball gave the Rockets the push necessary for a 22-6 run that ended the first half, a lead the team never really came close to relinquishing for the rest of the night.

The most hopeful note to take about Thursday night has to be the sudden appearance of a viable Houston Rockets defense, one that swarmed to the ball-handler, chased down the open shooter, fought and scraped for every loose (and soon-to-be-loose) ball. Samuel Dalembert and his seemingly endless reach (that, my friends, is the hyperbole of a Rockets follower who hasn’t seen anything resembling a shot-blocker fill the lane for Houston in three years) most blatantly represents this transition, but the tenacity that Kyle Lowry (who gave another mini-Rondo-esque performance in which he put up a near-triple-double with 16 points on 10 shots, 9 rebounds, 8 assists and 3 steals in 27 minutes of brilliant work), Courtney Lee and Goran Dragic showed for attacking the ball and frustrating any Spur in position to score felt like the rarest of flashbacks to an era long since past in the annals of Rockets history. Whatever got into them (let’s hope it was the direction of Kevin McHale), Houston’s defense stood apart as the one facet of Houston’s victory that seemed replicable on a night on which the Rockets shot 50% from the field, including 59% from the starters.

Because of the Rockets’ almost embarrassing dismissal of the veterans from San Antonio, the misfits of the 2009 NBA Draft/Rockets bench got some run, and everything went about as expected. Terrence Williams dribbled a lot, leading to some miserable half-possessions generally turned into something simply messy by Dragic’s Steve-Nash-influence-on-his-sleeve approach, but Williams did give defenses greater reason to make sure not to step off his jumper by nailing a couple of open threes, a blessing for a man with the handles and first step of Williams. In the tallness department, Hasheem Thabeet still finds himself amongst the league leaders; basically everything else the big man does lags behind that ability. Johnny Flynn was given the chance to come in and dribble into several traps in which Gregg Popovich bet that Flynn couldn’t find his 7’3″ roll man, a gamble on which the Spurs coach looked as wise as ever. Jordan Hill also played (that’s doing he of the seven rebounds a disservice, but his presence as a starter seems absolutely superflous in the face of the work Dalmebert’s doing at this point).

A Kevin Martin showing. Another bout of Lowry do-it-all dominance. A return to the productive reliability of Luis Scola (18 points on 12 shots of mid-range butter). A defense that appeared out of thin air to enchant an excited home crowd in the team’s first appearance in Houston. For a night, all is right for the Houston Rockets, and even the din of all of the disappointment can’t drown out the ebullience that a terrific win can stir up.

Houston Rockets vs. Orlando Magic: postgame thoughts

Here was our game thread.  Join us on Thursday.  It’s fun.

Game 1 in the books and the dream of 66-0 is over.  But the equally compelling dream of 0-66 is still very much alive.

In all seriousness, despite the complete collapse, I came away very surprised by the team’s play tonight against a solid, veteran Orlando group that used to be on people’s radars as a contender before SuperFriends and Dwight Howard-wanting-to-be-Shaq happened.

This team will make the playoffs, I think.  Then again I’m the guy that predicted that DeMarcus Cousins would be in pinstri….errr, the Chinese National team’s threads last June.  But yeah, after seeing Dalembert close gaps and be long, I think after Kevin McHale learns that Luis Scola is not a center (seriously, what was that in the 4^th quarter?), and figures out other rotation nuances, the team should roll towards the 8^th seed or slightly higher.  Too much talent.

From the start, there was much to like.  Jordan Hill showed a pulse before reverting back to being Jordan Hill after 30 seconds, picking up some cheap fouls.  You really have to wonder now what the plans are for Hill after the Dalembert signing.  He’s clearly fourth on the depth chart with Patterson the far better player.  Will he really ever get a chance with major minutes?  It’s unfortunate because he’s showed major signs.

Dalembert was glorious.  The 7 footer summoned his inner Mutombo, contesting shots and clogging the paint, being active in ways that no 7 footer in red/white/pajamas has since Kelvin Cato’s first game as a Rocket (the one that earned him that contract that ESG and Slim Thug so greatly detested.)  He’s the answer for this team.  He’s pretty much what they lacked all of last year.  For reasons I don’t want to have to hash all over again, I don’t like that at all.  But regardless, this is the direction management has chosen to take, and this is what we have.  The Rockets have a rim protector.  If he were 10 years younger, Dalembert would be DeAndre Jordan.  (Then again, he was Jordan 10 years ago, hence the contract that made him overrated in the first place.)

Did Kyle Lowry improve his ball-handling?  Odd because that usually doesn’t happen for NBA point guards—once you’re already at a certain level, there’s only so much room for improvement in something of which you are supposedly a master.  (It’s like a mathematician getting better at adding….or something like that.)  Anyways, Kyle had some sick crossover moves in transition tonight that I can’t remember him having in the past.  Before, he’d usually just go end-to-end in a straight line.  Anyways, look at that stat line.  When did Kyle Lowry become Magic Johnson?

I think Lowry really has a chance to be an All-Star this year if the Rockets surprise.  Remember how we got him for Rafer Alston?  Yeah, I think that one worked out fairly well.  At just 25 still, and apparently still improving, the Rockets are rock solid at at least one spot for the foreseeable future.  In fact, I’d argue that Lowry is the best point guard the Rockets have ever had during my lifetime.  (No I am not forgetting Steve Francis; that was meant intentionally.)

It was really nice to see Marcus Morris get into the game early.  Even if he didn’t do anything, it means they intend to make him a part of the regular rotation and give him a chance.  Morris had his lunch money stolen by Big Baby but I’m not worried; I’m more interested to see how he does as a ‘3’.  Once Patrick Patterson returns, I would really like to see Morris get some reps inside, posting up smaller forwards.

Terrence Williams again impressed, even showing off a nice Euro-Step in transition.  Coupled with his preseason play, you have to think T-Will is really turning the page with this new coaching staff.  He’s the one guy on this team with real game-breaking potential and he showed it in spurts tonight.  There was one play during this one where he dribbled around the perimeter, came back out, used the screen man, and hit a cutting Courtney Lee in stride, showing the passing that sets him apart.  It’s just a matter of time before Williams takes Bud’s spot in the starting lineup.  The only thing keeping him back is the attitude: if he can keep his head on straight, the sky is the limit.  That’s always a big if, but it’s good to see some early returns.

Final thoughts: Kevin Martin was absolutely awful tonight, begging the questions surrounding his eventual departure.  What’s his value looking like around the league?  People talk about Minnesota as a landing spot, but what could they offer that they’d want to give up?  Beasley?  Milicic?  Williams, Rubio, and Love aren’t going anywhere and the Clip…Hornets have their pick.