Final rebound makes all difference
The game came down to an offensive rebound. Somehow, some way — though no one would have predicted or even imagined how — an offensive rebound had to be the difference.
For a half, the Rockets stood toe-to-toe with the NBA’s best rebounding team.
For most of the second half, the Knicks demonstrated all of their usual physicality and hit the Rockets with their customary dominance of the glass.
That brought Monday’s game to the last shot in a final split second and the most unlikely and decisive rebound of the night.
Jalen Green tried a tough reverse to beat the clock and break a tie. Knicks forward Precious Achiuwa swatted away Green’s drive, but the ball bounced out to guard Aaron Holiday, who in a game with 31 offensive rebounds did not have any.
He gathered the rebound with time only to leap, twist and fire a one-handed heave at the rim. That missed, but Jalen Brunson was called for fouling Holiday with .3 seconds left, allowing him to hit two free throws to lift the Rockets past the Knicks 105103 on Monday night at Toyota Center.
That was not how Rockets coach Ime Udoka drew up the final possession. But Holiday did intentionally miss his third free throw so that when Knicks forward Josh Hart grabbed the rebound, his timeout came too late to give New York another chance.
When the final video review showed time had expired, unexpected and unconventional as the final rebound had been, it was a fitting finish.
“Had to do a better job of gang rebounding,” Udoka said. “But got it when it counted. A fortunate bounce on the block.”
Holiday had an equally stunning play earlier when he dunked on Knicks forward Bojan Bogdanovic, his second consecutive game dunking on a much larger defender. With the final missed shot bouncing to him, Holiday checked the clock and knew he had just enough time in the 1.1 seconds between the blocked shot and the foul.
“I tried to get the ball and get a shot off,” Holiday said. “I saw him tip it. I tried to get a 3, and Jalen (Brunson) ran into my chest, and they called a foul. I looked at (the clock) as the ball was rolling just to make sure I can have time to get it and shoot.”
For a half, the Rockets were beating the Knicks at their own game. In the final split second, they did it again when it mattered most.
“We found a way to get rebounds late to put us in the position to win,” said forward Dillon Brooks, who matched his career high with six 3-pointers on just seven attempts. “We needed it a lot. We told each other we’ve got to play free, play together, play a little desperate. And I feel like we did that tonight.”
Considering the Rockets’ final game before the AllStar break is Wednesday at Memphis, where Brooks played his first six seasons, he could have said the Rockets’ grit-and-grinded their way to the win.
The Knicks did not find much poetic about the game coming down to a rebound and a last-second foul call. Asked three times about the call, Brunson answered the same way three times.
“Great call,” he said unconvincingly. “Next question.”
With that, Brunson avoided an NBA fine better than he avoided Holiday.
Officials, however, had more to say. After reviewing the video postgame, lead official Ed Malloy told a pool reporter the contact was marginal and that Jacyn Goble should not have called a foul. The Knicks filed a protest with the NBA on Tuesday.
“In live action, it was felt that the lower body contact was illegal contact,” Malloy said. “After seeing it during postgame review, the offensive player was able to return to a normal playing position on the floor. The contact which occurred after the release of the ball therefore is incidental and marginal to the shot attempt and should not have been called.”
The Rockets had matched the Knicks’ toughness just enough, though with more than a few shaky stretches as New York erased a 16point first-half deficit and closed to within two in the fourth quarter, pulling into a tie with 8.7 seconds left on a Brunson jumper.
That set up the final possession and stunning finish. But the Rockets had stood up to the Knicks after a third quarter in which New York pushed them around.
For a half, the Rockets matched the NBA’s top rebounding team and outscored the Knicks 10-9 in second-chance points. In the third quarter, the visitors outrebounded Houston 18-4. New York’s 19 offensive rebounds in the game were the most for a Rockets opponent this season. And while the Rockets made just four of 12 shots in the quarter, they did not get a single offensive rebound.
The Rockets turned that around in the fourth quarter. They needed Brooks to make all four 3-pointers he put up, but they also limited the Knicks to just one second-chance field goal, none in the last 8⁄ minutes.
The Rockets also had an unconventional source of rebounding strength, with rookie point guard Amen Thompson, who has been starting with Fred VanVleet out, getting 13 rebounds, six off the offensive glass. With eight points, five assists and five steals, Thompson is the first rookie with those numbers since Magic Johnson in March 1980.
“He’s a stat-sheet stuffer for the most part,” Udoka said. “He was all over the place. Played some really good defense. When we needed bodies in there to rebound, he helped out with the bigs there.”
Thompson is averaging 11.2 points, 12 rebounds and 4.6 assists in his five starts.
“I just feel like I’m a lot more athletic than a lot of people, so I could outjump them,” Thompson said. “I’m active, so I get a lot of rebounds. I feel like I’m getting back to myself after the injuries.”
He is in position to rebound more frequently than most point guards, often stationed at the dunker’s spot. But that still requires that he battle big men inside, allowing Thompson to say that his offensive rebounding “demoralizes the opponent. That’s good. And you see the bench; they love it.”
The biggest rebound, however, came from the guard on the floor for the final seconds, a stunner even more exhilarating than all the boards that preceded it.
“It was huge,” Holiday said. “We lost the last two I feel like we could have won. Just didn’t get it done down the stretch, but I’m glad we were able to pull this out. It was a big win for us.
“We can win in a lot of different ways.”
They would not have guessed they would win the way they did, but in a game about rebounds, the Rockets rebounded from a winless road trip when the last rebound was the difference.