Rest may lighten load for Harden

The Rockets and Clippers gave us a taste of the playoffs Wednesday night.

At least a taste of what the Rockets hope to see later in the year.

I know, I know. The NBA season just started, and the postseason is five months away. But we got some April intensity on a frigid November evening.

A one-point game with four minutes to go between two serious title contenders led by two of the best players in the league is supposed to be fun whenever it is played.

But November-April basketball flings can share a similarity with failed May-December romances. Bad timing.

These regular-season tests are important but overrated.

There is a decent chance this year’s champion was on the Toyota Center court Wednesday. Gambling odds list the Clippers and Lakers as the favorites, with the Rockets currently holding the fifth-best odds.

The Rockets lost a spot since the beginning of the season thanks to their poor defensive play early. They seem to have figured that out.

Wednesday’s game felt like more than a standard game, but what does it mean that the 8-3 Rockets won?

They showed some resiliency, closing strong with a 17-7 run despite two players in their eightman rotation out for the night. Eric Gordon will miss a month and a half because of knee surgery, and Danuel House Jr. is down with a back bruise.

Entering Thursday’s games, the Rockets had the third-best record in the league and were still coming together.

But as entertaining as winter basketball is, spring ball is what matters most. The Rockets have won the second-most games in the league over the last three seasons but have yet to advance to the NBA Finals.

A win over Kawhi Leonard and the Clippers could mean something if a tiebreaker comes into play when the regular season is over, but getting past the Clippers 11 games into the season is like taking a lead two miles into a marathon.

Last year, the Rockets faced a Leonard-led team twice in the regular season, and Houston

prevailed both times, with James Harden pouring in 35 points in each game.

Yet when the season was over, Leonard and the Toronto Raptors rolled through the Eastern Conference and celebrated an NBA championship, while the Rockets lamented an early playoff exit in the West.

Harden’s 47-point performance against the Clippers was impressive. He put in more than 44 minutes of work to earn it.

Russell Westbrook was in foul trouble, and it was the Rockets’ first game without Gordon to eat up some backcourt minutes. Still, that is a lot of effort three weeks into a grueling

NBA season. Especially for a player who has logged more minutes than anyone in the league since he joined the Rockets before the 2012-13 season.

As ugly a term as “load management” has become, and with good reason, surely the Rockets would trade a few hundred minutes of regular-season wear and tear if it meant Harden would be stronger for longer in the playoffs.

There are no guarantees, of course, and Harden is a stubborn sort who so loves playing that it is difficult to keep him off the court. But at some point, he will need to back off.

Much of his hard work goes unnoticed. If you spend too much time watching an occasional defensive lapse in super slo-mo on a loop, you

might think Harden doesn’t go as hard as he does.

It takes a lot of work to handle the ball as much as he does and to take as much contact as he does every night.

Harden has played more than 20,000 regular-season minutes in seven-plus years with Houston. Leonard, who came into the league the year before the Rockets traded for Harden, has played less than 15,000 in his entire career, including the playoffs.

While Harden has played no fewer than 72 games as a Rocket, only twice has Leonard played more than 66 games in a season.

But when it comes to the playoffs during that time, Leonard’s and Harden’s minutes are very similar, and Leonard has played more games thanks to three trips to the NBA Finals, with two championships.

Some of that is injuryrelated, but on some level the energy Leonard brings to the postseason has to be boosted by playing so few minutes during the regular season.

The Rockets are being smart in resting Westbrook, who is coming off another knee surgery, on the second night of backto-back games.

One has to wonder: If they gave Harden some personal days during the season, would he be more likely to deliver Wednesday’s mid-November night’s dream in April, May or June?