One mood swing after another. It's so fitting that the Rockets
followed up three consecutive crushing losses with an exciting win against one
of the five or six best teams in the league. The team can pull us in almost as
quickly as they can pull us out. It's these flashes of brilliance that make the
stale, lackluster rebuttals so disappointing.
Tonight, the Rockets showed up. They brought
an impressive amount of energy and the ball was flowing. It's simple.... when
the team plays with energy and knows their role on offense, they're deadly.
After getting off to a great start with a
plethora of Harden dimes (finished the game with 13), Beasley buckets, Beverley
threes, and a 29-21 lead after the first quarter, the Rockets reverted back to
their old ways, falling back into that team with an identity issue.
Dwight Howard grew frustrated, and tried to force his way out of a bad
individual performance with post ups, which can be fine at times. The problem
is when he hunts for post touches is that he has a very bad feel for when to battle
for position. Dwight’s constantly seen battling for position and clogging the
paint while the team runs some sort of alternative action. Whether it be a
dribble handoff, a pick and roll, or even an isolation off of a switch, you can
catch clogging the paint. The second quarter had a lot of this and the 3 point
deficit at halftime was earned.
JB Bickerstaff deserves a lot of credit
for this game. Houston allowed far too much middle penetration on defense for
the first 24 minutes and they came out aggressively trapping every pick and
roll in the second half. This timely adjustment frustrated Toronto's dynamic backcourt
resulting in an ejection for both Lowry and DeRozan. Perhaps the biggest
adjustment of the game was when Capela and Dwight were both in foul trouble, Bickerstaff
decided to play a lineup of Terry-Beverley-Brewer-Harden with Beasley at the 5.
While Rocket fans silently panicked waiting for this lineup to disastrously
blow up in Bickerstaff’s face, it never did. The lineup was tenacious on
defense and played much better defense than one would expect, making a key run
to take AND extend the lead.
Harden couldn't have been much better and
the 32-13-11 line speaks for itself. It's hard to overstate how good he's been
since the All Star break. His defense has improved tremendously, and he's been
setting up his teammates about as well as he ever has.
The unsung heroes of tonight deserve a
huge amount of credit, they helped provide the spark required in a game where
Dwight just didn't have it. If I had told you the Rockets won a game where
Dwight had 2 points and 5 rebounds, you probably would have slapped me, but
here we are.
Patrick Beverley's defense on Lowry was
pretty great, and dished 5 assists with 6 3s. His shooting is invaluable for
Harden. He needs to be on the floor as long as Harden is.
While D-Mo only played 15 minutes,
he was super productive. He's rounding back into shape. Unless he's under a
minutes restriction, he should probably play more. It feels like JB forgets
about him sometimes. D-Mo often subs out 6 minutes into the second half only to
never return to action regardless of his performance.
Beasley's efficient chucking continued
tonight, with 21 points in 28 minutes. I'm still waiting for his efficiency to
fall off a cliff, but it never does, he'd be one of the best midseason
steals of all time. If the Rockets loved defense as much as Beasley loves
scoring (Which seems impossible), the Rockets probably wouldn't be in this
struggle to get into the playoffs.
The Rockets managed to recapture the 7th seed from the Mavericks with this win and are on track to gain a half game lead on Dallas as we speak (Golden State holds a 10-PT lead over Dallas in the 4th quarter at home in Oracle).
All in all, this was a damn good win.
Maybe even a great one. But if we know this team, they'll follow it up with a
crushing defeat, because Rockets.
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