Getting some timely stops
Defense rises to occasion late in OT road victory in Boston.
BOSTON — Few saw Russell Westbrook sprinting and then flying in from the corner, and even if the Celtics saw the Rockets’ guard before it was too late to interfere, none would have imagined he would rise to the altitude he would need.
P.J. Tucker had launched a 3-pointer from his favorite spot, but Westbrook was not going to assume it would splash the net.
When Tucker missed, Westbrook took off, never doubting he would snare and spike the rebound.
“Of course,” he said. “Why wouldn’t I? I go get the ball. Obviously, I was high enough to dunk it.”
That seemed to have sealed the Rockets’ win in the final minutes of regulation. It didn’t. But if there ever was a game that would have to be won with that sort of grit and will, this was it, with the Rockets forcing six consecutive misses to finish overtime, lifting the Rockets past the Celtics, 111-110, the hard way.
That made the Rockets’ sixth consecutive win, bookended by wins against the Celtics, Westbrook’s sort of game. Though plenty of teammates stepped up in the second half and especially in the fourth quarter, from Robert Covington finishing with 16 points and 16 rebounds, Danuel House Jr. scoring seven in fourth quarter and Tucker getting a season-high six offensive rebounds, it was a Westbrook sort of game.
“You can’t go to the supermarket and buy heart,” Rockets coach Mike D’Antoni said of Westbrook, who made 16 of 27 shots to score 41 points, his career-best seventh-consecutive game making at least half his shots. “He has that. Pretty impressive.”
With the Rockets retooled to unleash the full force of Westbrook, he has averaged 33.4 points and six assists in February, making 54.9 percent of his shots.
“You know he’s been MVP, right?” D’Antoni said. “That’s what he’s been doing. He’s been doing it a couple months. Those two guys, (Westbrook and James Harden), they don’t both have to play great. Russell played great.”
Harden, who knocked down a pair of free throws with 24.3 seconds remaining in overtime to put the Rockets in front to stay, had 21. He has averaged 31.9 points and 7.9 assists in February, making the Rockets the first team in NBA history with a pair of players averaging 30 points and five assists for a month.
After five games in which Harden, made 51.5 percent of his shots, he made just 7 of 24, going 4 of 17 from deep including three missed 3s after the Westbrook tip-dunk when Harden went searching for a dagger.
The Rockets, however, had another MVP to step up.
“That’s what he does, at a high level,” Harden said. “He’s been doing it. He’s more confident than he’s been. So, he’s able to go out there and do what he do, make plays for himself and for us.
“This is his first year as a Rocket. It was going to take some time. He’s there.”
Though Harden has declared himself the NBA’s best player several times this season, and again this week, he added that Westbrook “is up there,” as well.
“Not just his ability, but his confidence as well. You can have the confidence, but don’t have the ability. That’s what makes him so special.”
That also seemed to be enough. But the Celtics outscored the Rockets 9-3 in the final 36 seconds of regulation, With Marcus Smart hitting an off-balance 3 with 10.6 seconds left and with the Rockets up three in the closing seconds, the Celtics successfully batting an intentionally missed 3-pointer to Jaylen Brown. Brown had made just 1 of 5 3pointers. The Celtics had scored just four second-chance points.
When Brown beat the buzzer with his 3-pointer, the game went to overtime. After several minutes trading the lead, the Rockets went cold. But the Celtics missed their final six shots. Harden drove to draw a foul on Daniel Theis, who had swatted his previous shot, and put the Rockets in front. But they still needed the stop they could not get in the closing seconds of regulation.
Covington switched to pick up Brown who stepped back at the foul line for a jumper to win it but left it short. After Harden and Westbrook batted away the rebound, they fell into a satisfied hug, having won rallied back from down 17 and from a crushing buzzer-beater to take a Westbrook kind of win.
“It was hard-fought by both teams,” D’Antoni said. “They didn’t play particularly well. We didn’t play well. But everybody played hard. We came up with big stops.
“To win that game, we had to win it ugly, but we won it.”