In a normal game, the Houston Rockets would be led on offense by their big 3 of Lin-Harden-Parsons who would shoot well from the 3-ball and from the free throw line, and would have a defense anchored by Omer Asik. In a normal game, the Houston Rockets would struggle against teams with good defensive centers that can defend the paint. In a normal game, the Houston Rockets would be hampered from production in their power forward slot and their bench. And in a normal game, the Houston Rockets, in a game late in the season with critical seeding implications, would beat the worst team in the Western Conference after getting their starters rest by blowing out the Kings on Sunday night.
This was not a normal game. At all. In fact, while Houston may have had worse losses this season, this was probably the single most embarrassing game this entire year.
Former Rockets Goran Dragic and Luis Scola took command of the game from the very beginning, as the two of them utterly destroyed Lin and Asik during the first quarter respectively. Dragic passed the ball wherever he wanted, and the Suns players responded by hitting everything regardless of the level of defense, as he finished with a ridiculous 9 assists at the end of the first quarter. Meanwhile, improving on a 28 point performance the last time he played the Rockets, Luis Scola scored 13 points in the 1st quarter as he simply did not miss a single mid-range jumper in the entire first half, much less the quarter. The result was a 39-28 deficit at the end of the first 12 minutes.
During the second quarter, things began to pick up as the bench and Jeremy Lin started out extremely strong. Lin was initially extremely passive, firing up 5 3-pointers in the first quarter, but he seemed to recover as he scored 13 of his 20 points during the second through drives to the paint. The first part of the second quarter seemed to be a duel between Scola and Lin for dominance as Scola continued his strong performance with 21 points in the first half before he left with 3 fouls. With him gone, the Rockets under Lin managed to secure a 55-50 lead, but then the Rockets went on an offensive drought as they tried to give the ball to Greg Smith in the post, who promptly performed with the grace and elegance of Thomas Robinson a lumbering elephant. The Suns took advantage to retake the lead and scored 9 points in the final 2 minutes to lead 67-61 at the half.
The second half was punctuated by more of the same. While Scola cooled down during the second half, PJ Tucker decided to take his place, hustling and fighting for 21 points of his own and a myriad of rebounds in a style reminiscent of our own Patrick Beverley. With the exception of Parsons, Houston’s starters were wholly ineffective. While Asik had 6 points on 4 shots, he submitted his worst defensive performance of the year in his limited time as the Suns threw one 6’9’’ forward with range after another to frustrate him. Harden in the meantime had problems of his own. In the first quarter, he banged knees with Luis Scola and had to hobble around for a few minutes. While he immediately got back onto the court, his overall performance was ineffectual, as he missed all 6 of his 3-pointers (3 of them occurring in one possession) and was also an uncharacteristic 6-11 from the free throw line. Lin turned passive again, Harden couldn’t score, Asik couldn’t defend, and Smith did practically nothing as he was quickly benched for Terrence Jones. While the bench, led by Jones and a good shooting performance from Delfino, managed to spark a late run in the 4th quarter and cut the deficit to 2, the Suns always found an answer and held on to the lead for the rest of the second half.
- There were only two Rockets tonight who really submitted good, consistent games tonight. Chandler Parsons seems to have recovered from his right calf strain, playing for 40 minutes and scoring 24 points on 13 shots. He even managed to get 7 free throws tonight, a very high total for him. But while Parsons was good, Terrence Jones was more noticeable, especially given the absolutely miserable performances from Asik and Smith tonight. He had 6 blocks against the Suns, doing better than his 5 against the Kings, and unlike yesterday’s performance, was far improved on offense as he finished well. Part of that could be transpired to the lack of Phoenix shotblockers, and Jones did attempt one 3 pointer early in the shot clock in the 3rd quarter that horribly missed, creating an unfortunate similarity to Josh Smith.
I frankly couldn’t have cared less recently about the Lakers making the playoffs, especially since the alternative would be the rival Utah Jazz making it in LA’s place. Still, with Houston facing the prospect of finishing 8th if they lose on Wednesday, a game which was speculated to have major playoff implications months ago becomes what everyone had hoped from it.
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