Red-hot Harden leads Houston’s long deliveries

HOUSTON — After beating Houston in their first two meetings this season, Memphis Grizzlies coach David Fizdale said he expected the Rockets to come out swinging on Saturday night.

Sure enough, Houston jumped out to a 9-0 lead by draining three straight 3s in the first two minutes and never looked back en route to a 111-96 win over Memphis.

James Harden scored 38 points, and Houston hit 16 of 45 from beyond the arc, including 6 of 14 from Harden, who added eight assists and four rebounds.

Eric Gordon added 26 points on 6 of 11 from downtown for the Rockets.

“They had an edge tonight, which I expected,” Fizdale said. “They’ve got pride over there, and we had them 2-0 in the season series. We really expected them to come out hitting hard, but boy, they are tough when they’re making shots like that.”

Harden insisted the Rockets’ intensity had nothing to do with their previous two losses against Memphis.

“That’s every game for us,” Harden said. “Offensively, we want to be aggressive, defensively, we want to be aggressive and create opportunities.”

In their previous two meetings, Memphis held the Rockets to 90 and 89 points, the only two times the Rockets have been held under 100 points this season — and Houston’s lowest two scoring efforts ever under head coach Mike D’Antoni.

The Rockets outdid their previous scoring against Memphis by the end of the third quarter, entering the fourth with a 93-70 lead.

Houston hit at least 16 3s for a fifth straight game, matching an NBA record the team set last season for the most consecutive games with 16 or more from beyond the arc.

Defensively, the Rockets had a season-high 14 steals while forcing 20 turnovers and improved to 5-1 in games where they recorded 10 or more steals.

In their 98-90 loss at home to Memphis on Oct 23, the Rockets were outscored 20-2 in the final six minutes. On Saturday, they were much more proactive about answering any upswing in Memphis’ momentum.

“It’s not going to happen overnight, but as long as we’re consistent and we know what the long-term goal is, we’ll be all right,” Harden said.

“There’s going to be times when we get up big and let it slip away, but tonight was a really good job. When we went on a run, we sustained it and kept building our lead.”

Tyreke Evans led Memphis with 22 points in 29 minutes off the bench. Marc Gasol and Mike Conley struggled from the floor, scoring 15 and 12, respectively.

Ben McLemore made his season debut and Grizzlies debut, returning from an Aug 8 surgery to repair a non-displaced fracture of the fifth metatarsal in his right foot.

McLemore had four points and two rebounds in 18 minutes off the bench in his first game since joining the Grizzlies after four seasons in Sacramento.

The Rockets led 62-50 at halftime behind 22 first-half points from Harden.