Lackadaisical Rockets fall to Spurs
SAN ANTONIO — With nothing an NBA regular season can offer to chase, the Rockets slowed. That was fine and understandable, until the Rockets had to get out of second gear and could not.
They had clinched the best record in the Western Conference last week and the best record in the NBA on Saturday, reducing the remaining games of the season to tuneups.
Then, they got a look at a Spurs team playing with playoff intensity and defending with state-of-the-art ferocity and the Rockets never could get out of last week’s nothing-at-stake stroll. The offense that, like the Rockets’ record, had been the NBA’s best this season trudged through its worst game of the season Sunday until the
Spurs easily pulled away for a 100-83 romp, ending the Rockets’ winning streak at 11 games.
The Rockets had their fewest points, field goals and 3-pointers with their worst shooting and 3point shooting this season.
“Always (about) us,” guard Eric Gordon said. “We haven’t been slowed down or played like this all year.”
As sublime as the Spurs’ defense was, and as much as the Rockets missed Chris Paul who would often be the Rockets’ midrange answer for the Spurs’ schemes, the Rockets blamed their lethargy and the difficulty of snapping out of it.
Spurs dominate
“They played great defense,” Rockets coach Mike D’Antoni said. “They got on us and they played 10 times harder than we did. They looked like a team trying to stay in the playoffs in a good spot and we looked like a team that already got it sewed up. We played that way today and if we play that way Tuesday, we’ll get our rears busted again because the NBA has a very little margin of error between teams and if you don’t play as hard as they do, you’re going to lose. We didn’t play hard. They played extremely hard and well.”
The Spurs aggressively contested Rockets shooters at the 3-point line while their big men dropped to the paint to protect the rim. James Harden often drove into the teeth of the defense, seeking to finish over Spurs center LaMarcus Aldridge and Pau Gasol, or to get the ball to Clint Capela inside.
Harden had 25 points, but made just eight of 19 shots with his 3-point shooting slump continuing. Capela, the NBA leader in field-goal percentage, was 3-of-9.
“They do a good job,” Harden said. “They try to run us off the line. They played harder than us. They’re fighting for a playoff spot as well. Credit to them.”
Harden made one of six 3-pointers. With the Rockets’ offense so often stalled, three of those misses were on attempts rushed just to beat the shot-clock buzzer. But in his five games since his 42-point night in Portland, Harden has made 18.8 (6-of-32) percent of his 3-pointers. Since the All-Star break, he is making 28.8 percent of his 3s.
Told his touch has been off, Harden said, “It has?” He knew. “I just have to get it back,” Harden said. “I’ve been in the gym every single day. It’s not (a lack of ) confidence in shooting. As shooters, everyone goes through tough stretches. The only way to get out of it is to keep shooting, keep having that confidence and knowing that every shot you shoot is going in. Nothing changes for me.”
Shooting problems
He was far from alone. The Rockets made just 33.8 percent of their shots, far worse than the 37.5 percent they shot in Boston for what had been their worst this season. In a game they broke their NBA record for 3s in a season with 1,184, they made a season-low seven 3-pointers on 31 attempts.
A game after making 13 of 42 shots against the Suns in their worst shooting first half of the season, they made 13 of 41, scoring a season-low 38 points.
“Early on, we weren’t scoring the ball,” Gordon said. “We didn’t really score the ball like we should throughout the game. Little bit of lapses on defense where we made it a little bit too easy on them, let their guys get going. We never really got in a flow.”
Instead, as much as they tried to get up to speed, the Rockets had slowed for too long to catch a team with so much more at stake.