Eight is enough for streak
With Denver defense swarming Harden, teammates fail to step up and hit shots
DENVER — After so eloquently describing how difficult it is to come up with a way to defend James Harden, Nuggets coach Michael Malone unveiled a plan Wednesday night.
It was not unusual. It was not even unique to recent games. The Nuggets, however, made it work as few have since the season’s opening days.
With Harden surrounded from the 3-point line to the rim, the Rockets could not find the 3-point shooting to make the Nuggets pay, with Denver pulling away 105-95 to snap the Rockets’ winning streak at eight games.
The Rockets had their fewest points in a game, second half (44) and fourth quarter (22) this season. They took their fewest shots (76) and fewest 3-pointers (38). Harden’s 27
points were his fewest since the season opener.
Nearly all of that pointed to the Nuggets’ determination to double-team the ball out of Harden’s hands and the Rockets’ inability to attack with anywhere
near the force they showed when the Clippers, Pacers and Trail Blazers similarly trapped him.
“In this league, you double people like that,” Rockets forward P.J. Tucker said. “You give up open shots, attacks, which I understand. James is killing everybody right now. I would do that. Come off, make somebody else make a play. Our guys just have to do that.”
Asked if that was just a matter of making or missing 3s, Tucker said, “No, no, no, no. There’s definitely ways to attack it. We’ve dealt with that before. We’ve been very successful in the past. We’ve got a lot of new guys. We just have to figure how to attack it now, with different personnel.”
Harden made 4 of his 8 3s, 8 of his 16 shots overall. But the rest of the Rockets made just 8 of 30 3s, with Harden seeming to grow increasingly frustrated, committing four of his season-high eight turnovers in the fourth quarter.
“They just doubleteamed every possession,” Harden said. “They got lucky. They got away with one. We didn’t execute how we needed to. I think we allowed them too many points off our turnovers (32). Offensively, we just have to be better, which we will.
“I wasn’t aggressive enough, simple as that. I was being passive.”
The Rockets shot so poorly in the first half — other than Harden, they made 1 of 10 3-pointers — the Nuggets had little reason to change up defensively.
“There’s a combination of ways to attack it,” said Russell Westbrook who had 25 points but made just 2 of 9 3-pointers. “We’ve just got to make the right plays, read and react.”
With the Rockets far less aggressive in moving the ball either from Harden’s first pass or after he gave up the ball, they committed 21 turnovers even in a slow-paced game.
“We weren’t sharp,” coach Mike D’Antoni said. “They were double-teaming James, which, you know, good strategy. But James was kind of baiting them to let them doubleteam. Somebody’s got to make a play, make a shot.
“We had all kinds of good shots. Didn’t make any. Didn’t make a play, didn’t make good passes. Then they got more confidence. Every once in a while, games pop up like this. We just didn’t play well.”
That all got worse when Danuel House Jr. went out after 21 minutes when he ran into a Nikola Jokic screen, leaving in obvious pain with a sore left shoulder.
That and the Nuggets’ defense made the absence of Eric Gordon conspicuous. With the bench with Ben McLemore, Austin Rivers and Thabo Sefolosha a combined 3 of 12 on 3s, the Rockets looked particularly shorthanded.
With the Rockets so limited, the Nuggets did not have trouble pulling away, building an 18-point lead with a fourth-quarter run, largely by turning missed shots and turnovers into dunks on the other end. Jokic had 27 points with 12 rebounds, though Rockets center Clint Capela pulled down 21 rebounds to match Elvin Hayes for the longest streak of games with at least 20 boards in franchise history at five.
The issue, however, was on the other end, where the highest-scoring, topranked offense in the NBA stalled.
“Our defense was OK,” D’Antoni said. “We can get better there. But our offense was anemic. We couldn’t find people to make shots.”