ROCKETS FALL TO T-WOLVES
19-point lead disappears quickly thanks to dreadful offense, sieve-like defense
MINNEAPOLIS — The Rockets finished breaks and splashed 3pointers and had the blowout in sight until they stared too long at how well things were going that it blinded them.
They were romping for a while but then shifted to cruise control far too early. They led by 19 in the first half Monday night, but the Timberwolves found just a small spark in the final half-minute before heading to the locker room. The Rockets never found the fire that had built the lead.
By the time the Rockets tried to crank up their energy again, it was too late. The Rockets were blown off the floor in the third quarter and never recovered as the Timberwolves rolled to a 10391 win. The Rockets managed just 29 second-half points, just nine in the fourth quarter, both their lowest totals of the season.
“For whatever reason, the second half we played without any spirit or energy,” Rockets coach
Mike D’Antoni said. “Things were going great the first half. Right at the end of the half, we let them come back. They hit that banked 3. I thought the whole second half we didn’t play with the right kind of spirit.
“Maybe it’s the third game in four nights. I’ll mark it down as being tired. Give them an excuse. But we’re in a dogfight in the West. We can’t have nights like this we lose because of our joy, our spirit out on the floor.”
With the Rockets’ rotation healthy again, and the previous routs allowing him to sit his starters in the fourth quarters, D’Antoni did not seem convinced by the tired argument. The Rockets let up. In the final minute of the first half, they allowed Jeff Teague to cruise to the rim for a layup, turned the ball over and did not get back while Andrew Wiggins banked in a 3 from 38 feet.
The Rockets barely seemed to notice. When the second half began, the Wolves sent a second defender to get the ball out of James Harden’s hands after his 22-point first half. They dropped their big men deep in the paint to take away the lobs to Clint Capela that helped him score 16 in the first half. They took their chances on the Rockets’ 3-point shooting.
That betrayed the Rockets as they made just 3 of 22 3-pointers in the second half. Chris Paul went 1 of 8 overall in the game. Harden went 3 of 11 in the second half, scoring seven points.
“It stated with the turnover I got in the second quarter,” Paul said. “They banked in a 3. We went in up 14 instead of 17. It’s crazy, in the third quarter, we let them get going. They hit seven 3s in the third quarter. A team like that, that usually plays inside-out.”
The Rockets were up 16 just 2½ minutes into the second half after a fast break ended with a Capela dunk. That gave them 16 fast-break points in the game. They did not score another.
Robert Covington dropped in a 3-pointer before the Timberwolves began crashing the offensive boards to turn the game around. The Wolves scored on 10 of 11 possessions, scoring 24 points in a 51/2-minute rush to tie the game.
Trailing by four heading into the fourth quarter, it took more than five minutes for the Rockets to score again, and then it came only on a falling jumper from Harden after the Rockets had missed six shots and committed five turnovers to begin the quarter.
“We lost a little bit of our focus in the second half,” Capela said. “They came hard in the second half. We have to do a better job of staying focused, stay focused on our shots, stay focused defensively, stay focused rebounding the ball on the defensive end.”
The Rockets made just 4 of 17 shots in the fourth quarter, only 1 of 11 3-pointers. They were outscored 14-5 in second-chance points, 21-12 off turnovers, bringing reminders of the failures of the four-game losing streak they thought they had left behind with their two victories over the weekend.
But everything pointed to when they led by 19 and thought the game was over.
“We just played with a sense of urgency in the first half,” guard Eric Gordon said. “We had everything going offensively, defensively. We took away everything they do best in the first half. In the second half, we just laid an egg. We lost the game because we hurt ourselves.”