ROCKETS: JAMES HARDEN LEADS FIFTH STRAIGHT ROUT.
Harden & Co. exploit depleted foe in 1st quarter
Pretty soon, the Rockets will have to find another way to fatten their record than on a steady diet of cupcakes.
Challenging as it has been to keep attention through nearly two weeks of blowouts, the NBA offers other challenges the Rockets have not faced in a while.
For now, they built their customary secure lead, coasted for a while Monday night and then finished off a never-indoubt 117-103 romp past the Brooklyn Nets, their fifth consecutive rout since Chris Paul’s return. They then went to work trying to find things that have gone wrong.
The search was not difficult, though they might have felt impolite to say too much about what they could do better after cruising past a team so undermanned the entire starting lineup planned for this season was out with injuries or illness.
They also had to pick past the conspicuous things that went so well, from James Harden scoring 37 points with 10 rebounds and eight assists, and a tone-setting first quarter that Mike D’Antoni called the best he has ever seen, to Chris Paul’s season-high 14 assists without a turnover.
“Yeah, you know a win is a win and that’s good,” D’Antoni said. “I just didn’t think that we played well defensively, especially in the first half, the second quarter especially. You can just see some of the energy went out. You know, it ticks me off a little bit, but we did a pretty good job.
“It’s a long season. They feel like at certain times, they can win no matter what. ‘OK, let’s win.’ So I’m not worried about that. We just have to improve some things. ‘I’m going to play well all the time,’ that’s utopia. That’s not possible. I just cry around and moan around for a while. I’ll get over it.”
Month to remember
He can comfort himself with the knowledge the Rockets are 11-1 in November, having outscored opponents by 16.4 points this month, just shy of the record margin of victory of 16.8 set by the 1963-64
Boston Celtics.
The Rockets also had corrected their major failing from Saturday’s blowout when they fell behind by 22 to the Knicks, taking a 21-point, first-quarter lead as Harden made all seven of his shots, including five 3s, to score 20 points in his 10½ minutes.
“James’ first quarter was probably the best first quarter I’ve ever seen,” D’Antoni said. “That was an unbelievable first quarter.”
But when Harden was not shooting, the Rockets were missing most of the 3s and Nets coach Kenny Atkinson went to a zone.
“We had a really good first quarter. The second quarter, we kind of slipped up,” said Harden, who matched the NBA season high with eight 3-pointers. “They kind of went zone a little bit and then we finished it off the right way. It’s not going to be perfect every game.”
With the Rockets’ defense failing them in the second quarter, the Nets — or what is left of them — made 61.9 percent of their shots, allowing them to stay in the zone as the Rockets misfired from deep. By the third quarter, the lead was reduced to four and the Rockets had ways to be critical.
“We’ve got to keep building and playing better, especially defensively,” said Paul, who has 65 assists with 13 steals and seven turnovers in his five games since his return. “We had some bad stretches there and we can’t always just rely on our offense, but we’ll take the win. Right now, we’re just trying to pile wins.”
The Rockets have done that since he returned, winning all five games and by an average of 21.4 points per game.
The winning formula
When they picked up the defense in the second half, the Rockets blew the game open. Even with Paul and Eric Gordon a combined 2-of-14 from deep, the Rockets made 40 percent of their 3s for the fourth time in five games.
“We’ve just got to keep doing what we’re doing,” Ryan Anderson said. “We’re the only thing that can step in our way right now. We’re playing really well right now. We’ve got to build off this, not having let ups. We had some bad stretches on the defensive end we could have played so much better. We kind of need to keep pushing, keep fighting, keep playing real hard.”
With that, they had all they could want — another rout and a way to expect to be better.