When all goes wrong, when life gets you down, play the Sacramento Kings. That’ll clear all of life’s ills right up. They possess just enough talent to make it seem an accomplishment to trounce them in the way it seems every NBA team does; the Houston Rockets may not have achieved much more than a mid-season victory against the league’s worst team (minus its best player), but given the manner of the victory, last night’s win seems like a watershed moment. Chuck Hayes became the Rockets’ best finisher (however, he made much more of an impression when facing up DeMarcus Cousins, fading away for what has to be the most impressive shot of Chuck’s illustrious offensive career) for a night, and Chase Budinger’s jump shot awoke from the dead (pouring in a drool-worthy 18 points on 10 shots with four boards to boot). Luis Scola both dunked a ball and blocked a shot (his 18th put up in this 24-game-season), both such rarities that I could only chuckle at the team’s good fortune. Yes, everything goes right when the Kings are in town, and for a night, the Rockets gladly breathed in the auspicious air.
The Sacramento Kings tend to do the same things for an entire game, sticking almost obsessively to a game plan predicated on isolation sets for its stars (of which there are none, especially with Evans on the shelf) and pick-and-rolls that can occasionally create easy buckets. Those basic things were all clicking at the beginning of Tuesday’s blowout; at some point toward the end of the first quarter, the Rockets’ telecast spotlighted the Kings’ 67% shooting in opposition to the Rockets’ 35% mark. The Kings led by eight at the time and only three by the end of that period; they were shooting the lights out essentially, and when reality set in, they had nowhere to go. Carl Landry seems particularly misused in the team’s offense, almost never being allowed the space to take his man in the post thanks to the usual presence of Cousins. While I don’t think Landry should be starting (young big Jason Thompson serves as a better rebounding complement to Cousins’ endless offensive skill set), the bench seems to use him as the starters did last year: a big body for setting screens that can shoot the open jumper, a skill Landry possesses but is certainly not his strongest attribute. This team oozes youth and skill, but something about the team seems particularly ill-conceived, making people do things with which they just are not comfortable and allowing opposing teams the ability to capitalize on its uncertainty. Sacramento’s defense doesn’t constantly cause ulcers, but its flip nature with the ball (20th in the league in turnovers and embarrassing in its giving up 11 steals to the Rockets this night, at best a middle-of-the-road pack of thieves) will constantly undermine all of that skill, as possessions end with layups on the other end of the court eight seconds after the shot clock starts. This team’s future’s bright, particularly with the soft-handed, patient Cousins emerging, but it’s present seems frustratingly misguided.
In this family reunion of a game (Kevin Martin, Brad Miller, Donte Green, Rick Adelman, Luther Head and now Jermaine Taylor have all been associated with the opposing team at some point in their careers, and if you want to count Martin’s ghost in the form of Fransisco Garcia, I wouldn’t begrudge you it), the Rockets guffawed and smiled their way to several twenty-point leads in what became a laugher after the Kings’ initial hot shooting went limp. Maybe we can’t glean much from this one, but hey, it sure as hell was fun to watch.
Houston Rockets 118, Sacramento Kings 105
On to the links…
- Because he was in town, fan favorite Landry was answering questions about returning to the Rockets (hell, even the Rockets themselves had made such inquiries) and found the time to respond diplomatically, perhaps giving Rockets fans a little more hope for a reunion: “‘The fans here were great to me,” Landry said. ‘I had great support. This is a place I enjoyed. I’d consider it, definitely, but that’s so far away I haven’t thought about that yet. I’d consider every team. It was my dream to play in the NBA, not for a certain team.’”
- I feel terrible (or mostly embarrassed) about it quite often, but I generally find that my favorite player at any given time in the NBA usually happens to be its best. I’ve been devout Kobe and LeBron followers at different points during the last half-decade (Chris Paul and Carl Landry also have held this unwanted, universally irrelevant title), and this year, the guy I can’t stop watching or talking about wears orange and blue and plays in the Mecca. Kelly Dwyer, why is Amar’e so nasty?
- When a bunch of bad teams trade draft picks and unrealized potential to each other, no one seems to care. Well, except the always mindful fantasy crowd.
- Bun B may be from Port Arthur, but we Houstonians know where his heart (and his body) can usually be found. He spoke to the Score about something called an MMA (I’ll get back to you guys once I figure out what that is… perhaps some sort of retirement package?), but later in the conversation comes some great basketball analogies and a great story about Vernon Maxwell and guns that doesn’t really involve Mad Max (but definitely involves guns).
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