Rockets Daily: Thursday, January 6th, 2011

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dDvspov0e4

Analysis and the not-so-daily links can be found after the jump.

Kevin Martin does not fare well in comparisons, and it’s a shame. Martin’s skills deviate so far from the norm, his best abilities so unlike those whose point totals look similar, that he cannot be juxtaposed with much fairness against the rest of this league’s dominant scorers. His points come from sly nudges that move his body directly in front of officials and dead-eye three-point shooting given just a few too many millimeters of space, so even when he pours in 45 points (on a mind-numbing 18 shots), Martin shocks all looking at the box score for the first time after the game. Yes, Martin’s stardom and stature in this league feel particularly nebulous in a league where men like Carmelo Anthony and Kevin Durant can appear to throw in 40 even when scoring half of that, and even last night, on a night that so clearly should have been Martin’s, an obnoxiously obvious presence emerged as the game’s model of dominance, the unflappable, steady LaMarcus Aldridge, massacring a rice-paper-thin Rockets frontline for the second time in four nights. Nothing could impede his progress near the basket as the Rockets’ post D proceeded to make him look like David Robinson, and like that, the game was out of the Rockets’ hands again, damned by a fourth quarter spent watching Aldridge without consistent double teams and their own shots clank off of the iron (there was a nine-minute-plus-stretch in which the Rockets missed every field goal until Kyle Lowry dropped a three with three seconds left in the game; as fans, we often remember a folding of our own team as more dramatically bad than it was, but this fourth quarter actually reperesented a collapse for the ages. Zero field goals for more than nine minutes in the fourth quarter of a close game? How does that even happen?).

What an ending. A 13-point fourth quarter lead evaporated. 45 points wasted. A night of miserable defense on a team that couldn’t hit an outside shot to save its life (Wes Mathews and Rudy Fernandez, likely the Blazers’ two best outside shooters this year, combined to go 7 for 23). Another clinic by a Portland defense not necessarily known for its guile. An even better example than the loss to Denver of exactly how dependent this team becomes on whoever possesses the hot hand (only one Rocket not named Martin scored in double digits). One more night for Patty Mills’ highlight reel. A few minutes for Terrence Williams that showed fleeting signs of hope for a team mired in its own lack of it. 16 turnovers ruining any semblance of offensive fluidity.

Ugh. It was the kind of ending that didn’t deserve full sentences to be written about it. The Rockets will have to forget about it if they hope to survive the juggernauts on their upcoming schedule, trying to erase what should have been Martin’s night to remember. Let’s hope his shooting hand has a selective memory.

Houston Rockets 100, Portland Trailblazers 103

Box Score

The Portland Roundball Society

On to the links…

• The NBA has had enough. Seemingly every player, coach, owner and mid-game peanut peddler have been accosted by the great knower-of-all-things Phil Jackson, and all of those guys have decided to shoot back. Adrian Wojnarowski first reported on a bit of verbal sparring between the greatest coach of all-time and my favorite person of all-time, Ron Artest, allegedly stemming from Jackson’s constant poking at Artest through the press; later this week, Mavericks owner Mark Cuban got a few shots in at Phil’s relationship with his boss’ daughter, Jeannie Buss, not necessarily talking about anything in particular but getting to use the phrase “boy-toy” to describe a 65-year-old man after the sextagenarian had questioned the Mavs’ ability to withstand Caron Butler’s season-ending injury. Now, the stale, hilariously dull icing has been put on the cake with former Laker Vladimir Radmanovic’s retort to a Phil Jackson comment made months ago. Beside my somewhat affinity for Vlad because someone once told me that I looked like him, I would like to note that the score is now rest-of-NBA 3, Phil Jackson 1,552,421,250. But everyone else seems to be on a run here.

• I don’t know if you, good reader, have been watching many Clippers games, but please, for the love of God, Buddha and your future/existing grandchildren, watch as much of this as you can physically stuff inside your eyeballs and temporal lobes.

• After all of that talk about Melo and creating one’s own shot, here are some interesting numbers that actually delineate the game’s best shot-creators (the players whose effective shots develop out of their own doing as opposed to a teammate’s assist).

• Bahahahaha… never don’t be Ron Artest, Ron Artest.

• I did not get to catch yesterday’s aging-powerhouse deathmatch between the Spurs and Celts, but 48 Minutes of Hell seems quite perturbed about the end of the nail-biter. I, on the other hand, am mostly gawking at the Celtics’ ungodly field-goal percentage (61%) and offensive rating (115 points per 100 possessions).

Thanks for reading, folks. See ya’ll soon.