Back to Texas
Oklahoma City Thunder heads to Houston for Game 4 with the Rockets.
In a storm of bad decisions, there was for the Thunder a momentary respite.
Twenty-one seconds remained in its Game 4 duel with the Rockets on Sunday, and after Oklahoma City center Steven Adams made the first of two free throws, he stepped off the line and walked to near midcourt to address Russell Westbrook in backcourt.
There was a brief exchange — “He told me just to be ready,” Westbrook said — before Adams walked back to the line, intentionally missed the second foul shot, grabbed his own rebound and found Westbrook for a deep 3-pointer that swished to cut Houston’s four-point lead to one.
It was near-perfection, and the life it gave the Thunder lasted all of seven seconds.
That’s how long it took the Rockets to inbound, push the ball to backup center Nene, who capped a perfect shooting day — and all but sealed a critical Houston win — with a layup, drawing a foul on Jerami Grant and completing a three-point play.
“Just a bad foul,” Grant said quietly after his team’s 113-109 loss. “Wasn’t really thinking.”
There was a little drama after that Nene play, but only a little. The Rockets survived an Alex Abrines tip-in and a scary inbound, Eric Gordon sank a pair of free throws and the visitors sent this best-of-7 series back to Houston with a 3-1 lead.
The home team hits the road again facing a daunting deficit after losing a game it led by 14 in the third quarter and squandered in the fourth.
There was no single play that doomed the Thunder, done in not only by its inability to stem Houston’s runs with Westbrook off the floor but by its decisions in the closing minutes with him on it.
There were the two 3-pointers Westbrook flung toward the rim with 33.9 and 28.4 seconds to play, both apparent attempts to draw foul calls in a game that had 46 of them and a combined 65 free-throw attempts.
Westbrook said he heaved the first one — a