If the newly minted contender Los Angeles Clippers and giant-killing Memphis Grizzlies looked like less than able-bodied humans against the San Antonio Spurs earlier this week, those who follow the Rockets could at best hope for a weakened version of the aging Spurs in Houston’s home opener on the second night of San Antonio’s first back-to-back of the season. Of course, fans were instead greeted by a borderline tedious decimation of the old fogies in black and silver (not a true descriptor of the team on any night other than this one) in which every single thing Rockets fans could have possibly hoped for to happen in this lockout-shortened season took effect, if only for one night of transcendence.
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.
