By: Forrest Walker
If the Houston Rockets are in a challenge with themselves to manufacture the least enjoyable game of basketball in history, they're doing an amazing job. They've only been at it for about a week, and they've successfully transitioned from a hot-shooting, layup swishing, alley-ooping offense into a an abandoned warehouse. In bringing back the sort of miserable, mean, foul-heavy and nigh unwatchable offense from the 1990's, the Rockets are indeed outdoing themselves. Ever since they stepped foot into Mexico, it's been an amazing show of discipline and perseverance to make a random game in November into a heart-stopping grind-fest.
The Oklahoma City Thunder, by the way, do not like the Rockets. This game was dragged into the mud, kicked in the head and then dumped into the woods by this grueling, unpleasant rivalry. This was the second-worst shooting game in the last thirty years, which is impressive in its horror. The Thunder, undermanned as they were, fought tooth and nail for this win on a night when the Rockets just wanted to blow a team out and get ready for the Memphis Grizzlies tomorrow. Steven Adams is a brilliant defender in exactly the same way Patrick Beverley is and combined with Serge Ibaka and Kendrick Perkins to put a cap on the basket. The Rockets got down in the mud with the Thunder and won a game that it's good to know they can win, but that we can only hope they never play again.
The secret to beating the Rockets, it turns out, is by playing as physically as possible inside. If you take away the drive and the post, which the Thunder definitely did, Houston has to hope the threes are falling, and has to shoot through a defense that isn't collapsing. When hacks and beat downs are par for the course inside, that's seldom going to favor the Rockets, who have a less physical and more skill-based offense. All of this is only exacerbated by the Rockets being terminally unable to hit a free throw or three pointer, both of which would have helped break the cycle of suffering that game was thrust into.
Don't even look at the box score. Nobody had a good night on either team, except for Steven Adams and Serge Ibaka picking up 6 and 5 blocks respectively. Nobody on the Rockets had more than 9 rebounds, and Harden was the only player on the team to score more than 12 points. His 19 were the highest score of the game, a truly dismal stat in a sea of puke.
On that note, the game eventually devolved into a series of increasingly hard fouls, reviews, and technicals. At one point, Patrick Beverley got into a ref's face for some reason (I'm still not clear whether it was for intimidation or to try to put his ear close enough to hear, or some combination thereof) and Thunder head coach Scotty Brooks zoomed in to object to this behavior. Neither he nor Beverley were assessed a technical foul. Sebastian Telfair wasn't so lucky. Later, Steven Adams returned after taking a scary hit to the head and worked his magic. He tangled up Trevor Ariza while going for a rebound, goading Ariza into a stupid push and a tech. Like Beverley, Adams is a great player to have on your team, but an easy player to hate when he goes against you. Put them in one game, and you get this, a swimming pool full of thumbtacks.
If you take only one thing away from this game, take this: it's not going to get any worse. The Rockets are 9-1 despite playing like cartoon aliens stole their power for the last week. We're in the "stand them at their worst" part of the aphorism, after the honeymoon of seeing them at their best for the first two weeks. Both teams had more field goals than shots. There's not much more down to go, and tomorrow will test the theory that it's all uphill from here.
