Key Rockets come up short on offense

With a little more than eight minutes remaining in Friday night’s game and the Spurs clutching a fourpoint lead, Rockets guard Pat Beverley had a squeaky clean look at the basket to the right of the top of the key.

Beverley’s resulting shot appeared just as impeccable, but teasingly rattled around the rim before falling out. Beverley spun around in disbelief, but by then he should have known better.

It’s how the night went — with typically much worse offerings than that one — for every Rocket outside of James Harden and Clint Capela.

The Spurs defeated the Rockets 103-92 in Game 3 of the Western Conference semifinals and have won consecutive games after the Rockets’ stunning 126-99 victory in the series opener at San Antonio.

On Friday, the Rockets simply looked stunned and were flat awful from the field, with Ryan Anderson, Nene and Lou Williams missing all 13 of their combined shots. Beverley matched the trio with 13 shots of his own, making just three.

“We have to move the ball,” guard Eric Gordon said when asked about the Spurs’ defense. “It’s more about what we’re not doing. We’ve got guys who can score, but we’re not creating good shots for one another.”

As for the Rockets’ defense?

“I thought we played solid defense, but defense is tough when you’re not taking good shots and they’re running down and getting baskets,” Gordon said.

Perhaps the game plan along the way should have shifted to getting the ball more to Capela: He was the only Rocket to shoot better than 50 percent from the field (6-of-9 for 12 points), and as a team the Rockets made 32 of 88 attempts (36.4 percent).

“We’ve got to move the ball a little bit better, period,” coach Mike D’Antoni said. “It’s been easy all year for shots from (the 3-point line). Now, it might be a third pass (to get open), and we’ve got to do a better job of moving it.”

The Rockets will try and avoid a 3-1 deficit Sunday night in Toyota Center, before the series heads back to San Antonio for a Game 5 on Tuesday night. The second-seeded Spurs regained home court advantage with the doubledigit victory over the thirdseeded Rockets.

Beverley said while the Spurs might have regained home-court advantage, “That’s why it’s a sevengame series.”

As usual, Harden, the star of the show, led the Rockets with 43 points, in making half of his fieldgoal attempts (14 of 28). He was only 5-of-13 from the 3-point line, however, but that number looked decent compared to the rest of his teammates (7-of-26 from long range).

Trevor Ariza started decent by making five of nine of his shots in the first half, but he cooled in a hurry and finished 6-of-15.

“We just have to play with more force … we just have to move the ball better and create better shots,” Gordon said. “Every game is going to be a battle. We need to keep on playing for one another and make better decisions.”

The Spurs are trying to make the Western Conference finals for the first time since 2014, when they also won their last of five NBA titles. The Rockets are trying to advance to the conference finals for the first time since 2015, in pursuit of their first NBA title since 1995.

“On offense we just let ourselves down,” D’Antoni said. “We couldn’t get it going.”