In their previous visit, the Rockets came to Utah on the second night of a back to back. They were visibly fatigued by the altitude and went down big in the first half before rallying back to claim the win in the second. Tonight they had an extra night to acclimatise, but they still looked slow in the thin air of Salt Lake City. Unfortunately this time they weren’t able to overcome their early sluggishness, and a night of defensive leakiness cost them what should have been an easy win.

• Parsons was kept out of the game last night after the back-spasms hit at the end of the San Antonio game, and he was sorely missed. Garcia got the start and was matched up against Haywood. Garcia carries a good defensive reputation after those excellent performances against Durant in the playoffs last season, but he really struggled to keep track of Haywood’s off-ball movement here. I think he’s probably better against slightly bigger opponents – it was the speed of Haywood that was making it tough for Garcia to keep up following him around screens and on quick cuts to the basket. Eventually McHale had to switch up the coverages and put Harden on Haywood instead – hardly an ideal state of affairs – and as you might expect he fared little better. Haywood torched the Rockets all game, ending with 29 points on 12 of 18 shooting.
• It wasn’t just the players guarding Haywood that were having a hard time. The whole team was really struggling defensively all the way through, with the pick-and-roll defence a major area for concern. The Trey Burke-Derrick Favors combination in particular was paying big dividends. Beverley and Howard did not seem to have a consistent defensive strategy against  it. I noticed a few times where they would set up to try to force baseline but end allow Burke to get to the middle, and others where Beverley would deny the middle but Howard would be out of position to prevent the baseline penetration. And sometimes they ended up switching, which left some pretty serious mismatches for Burke to exploit. Perhaps they were hoping that his inexperience would prevent him from taking advantage, but it didn’t work out that way at all.
• When Brooks and Asik took to the court at the start of the fourth quarter, they were much more consistent in forcing the Jazz baseline on the side pick-and-rolls and it seemed to work better. Brooks committed a lot more to keeping his man from getting to the middle. When Beverley tries to do this he always seems to get caught on the pick – I think his aggressive style of defence means he has a tendency to over-focus on his man and it really hampers his defence in this particular scenario.
• The Rockets were within striking distance late in the game, but just couldn’t get the stops they needed to steal the win. Burk(e)s Trey and Alex were consistently able to get free of Brooks and Beverley in the waning minutes and hit all their shots, and whenever they missed it seemed the Jazz were able to corral the offensive board. The bottom line is that the Rockets scored more than enough points to win this game, but their consistent inability to stay with their defensive assignments meant that it wasn’t sufficient.
• Harden’s driving game was working really well tonight. The Jazz didn’t have anyone who could stay in front of him and he was able to consistently scythe into the paint to get easy buckets at the rim. Often there’s an element of awkwardness to his attacks, with limbs flying and whistles blowing. But tonight it looked smooth and effortless, a welcome reminder of how fun he can be to watch when he’s on his game. It didn’t even seem to matter that his three point shot wasn’t falling, he could just glide to the basket regardless. 37 points and 8 assists were his final tally, and he earned them.
• Often the problem when Harden is playing well is that there’s a tendency for the rest of the team to stand around and watch rather than keeping the motion going in the offence. There were definitely a few times where you could see that happening this evening, but I think it’s understandable in a game like today’s – there was a little bit of altitude fatigue at work and the team was missing quite a lot of scoring in the absence of Parsons and Lin.
• The Harden-Howard pick-and-roll did look great tonight when they ran it – I counted three effortless alley-oop jams for Howard. As the Utah commentators kept saying: “Why aren’t they doing this every time?”. Finding a way to unlock the potential of that duo on a more regular basis must be near the top of McHale’s priority list.
• Finally, on a non-Rockets note, I was really impressed by what I saw from Trey Burke tonight. He’s going to have to play catch up with Carter-Williams and Oladipo if he wants to take home the Rookie-of-the-Year award, but on tonight’s evidence that doesn’t look beyond the realms of possibility. He reminded me a lot of Damien Lillard – he’s got that same confidence to take an open shot if one presents itself and also has the balance and vision a point guard needs to deliver the ball on the money. I think he and Favors are going to form a pretty potent tandem in years to come.

View this discussion from the forum.