The beat goes on
The winning streak requires overtime to reach 10.
MINNEAPOLIS — With time running out on the Rockets and their longest winning streak since 2008, James Harden leaned into the lane, looked around Minnesota’s KarlAnthony Towns and delivered a message, clear, concise and certain.
He looked at Ryan Anderson to his left and said: “We’re going to win this game. Be ready to shoot the basketball.”
The Rockets had won in a variety of ways through their unbeaten December, but never quite like this. They trailed the Timberwolves on Saturday night by as much as 17 and were down 12 with less than three minutes remaining. With that, they suffocated the Wolves on one end and rained 3s on the other until they rallied back and took a stunning 111-109 win to extend their winning streak to 10 games.
They were about the only ones in Target Center who were not surprised.
“We were pretty confident down the stretch,” said Anderson, who matched Harden’s 28 points. “I was talking to James. We were like, ‘We’re going to get this game, we’re still going to get this game.’
“Even when we were down about 10 with a few minutes left, we know we can make big shots and we have guys that really step up.”
The Rockets ended the game with a run of 3s that took them from a night of misfiring to a 14-2 surge in the last 2:05 of regulation that forced overtime. Anderson and Trevor Ariza each hit a pair. Ariza was just 1-of-9, but he suddenly could not miss when the Rockets could not have survived if another shot betrayed them.
His final 3, with 6.5 seconds left, tied the game, but also spoke to the Rockets’ mentality to always take good shots no matter what preceded them.
“We just continue to play through whatever,” Ariza said. “Never stop until it’s over. That’s what we went into the end of the game knowing. You don’t worry about shooting percentages. You just shoot.” Never shy about shots
The Rockets shot throughout the night as if they knew they would eventually find the touch and the last bit of bounce in legs left weary by four games in six nights.
The Rockets made 17 of 51 3-pointers, taking more 3s than any team in NBA history, other than the 61 they put up the night before at Toyota Center.
Their streak of five consecutive games with at least 15 treys is two games longer than their nextlongest run.
Yet, as much as the Rockets shot themselves back into the game, they won it with defensive stops just as remarkable.
With the Wolves leading by three in the final seconds, Harden forced Zach LaVine into a miss with 15.2 seconds left. Andrew Wiggins got the rebound, but Pat Beverley and Harden swarmed with Harden blocking his shot. After Ariza’s 3-pointer, Eric Gordon would not allow Wiggins to get the ball closer than 45 feet before he missed at the buzzer.
Down the stretch and in overtime, the Rockets went without a center. Clint Capela had left the game early in the second half with a bruised left knee.
Though he was initially considered questionable to return, he sat out the rest of the way and Anderson took on Towns down the stretch. Towns, who had 41 points, was 2-of-5 in the fourth quarter and overtime with four turnovers.
“(Defense) was everything for us toward the end of the game,” said Gordon, who had 20 points. “We just locked in defensively and just started knocking down shots.”
Once in overtime, Harden scored the Rockets’ first seven points as the Rockets surged to a five-point lead. They never trailed again.
“I am so confident in this team, you don’t ever see us out of a game,” said Harden, who was one rebound shy of a thirdconsecutive triple-double. “You see us score the ball so easily, so well.” Put to the test
They had never had to test that theory quite as they did Saturday, when they could not make their usual shots, until they did.
They seemed certain to be headed into defeat until they changed directions.
“We have so much confidence in each other,” Anderson said. “If you miss five shots in a row, we want you to take the sixth shot.
“That was kind of the definition of tonight. We just have to stick with it.”