Hairy Christmas
James Harden and the Rockets spoiled the holiday for the Thunder, 113-109.
HOUSTON — Steven Adams walked back to the tunnel to get on the stationary bike as the Thunder was in the midst of a thrilling Christmas Day finish against the Rockets.
Maybe he should have been walking to the scorer’s table.
In a tie game, Houston center Clint Capela corralled his 22nd rebound and found Rockets fillin Danuel House for a corner 3-pointer which started an avalanche.
When the Thunder rebounded, it gave itself a chance to win.
When it didn’t, it was at the mercy of James Harden and the Rockets in a 113-109 loss on Tuesday.
“A couple of them we were going in, flying in for a rebound,” Thunder forward Paul George said. “A couple of them just went over our head.”
Harden’s floater with 20.4 seconds left iced the game, two of his gamehigh 41 points, but the Thunder did its best to throw body after body at the reigning Most Valuable Player, from Russell Westbrook getting in close, to George, Jerami Grant and Terrance Ferguson shuffling to keep Harden in front of them.
The body issues weren’t on checking Harden, who needed 35 shots to get his 40-piece.
They were on finding Capela, on keeping the Rockets from second looks.
The Rockets pulled down 17 offensive rebounds which resulted in outscoring the Thunder 23-9 on secondchance points.
Capela outrebounded the five-man front court of Adams, Jerami Grant, Nerlens Noel, Patrick Patterson and Abdel Nader 23 to 20.
Capela’s 10th and final offensive rebound was the killer.
Tied 93-93, he found House in the corner for a 3-pointer which started an 11-2 Rockets run in the fourth quarter.
“Rotational box outs are always the toughest ones,” Adams said. “They put you in such a tough bind where you have to go back to your guy on the perimeter.
“It’s just a pretty tough situation. It’s not impossible to do the rotational box outs, it just wasn’t on point.”
Adams finished with 37 minutes played and the Thunder was playing for the third time in four nights.
In a span of three minutes though, the Thunder was outscored 7-2 — four points coming from Capela — before Adams and George, who played 38 minutes, could get back in.
“You’ve got to let him rest a little bit; he’s out there the entire first quarter,” Donovan said of why he didn’t bring Adams back earlier. “I don’t think Steven would bat an eye. It’s not him, it’s just my feeling of trying to give him a little bit of rest.
“But we’ve got to be good enough. Most of the game, he was matched up with Capela. So it was more of a team thing.”
Even after going down by as many as nine points with five minutes to go, the Thunder didn’t wilt, cutting the lead to 107103.
But Austin Rivers canned two 3-pointers in three possessions, the first a demoralizing punctuation on the Thunder’s woeful defensive rebounding.
George defended Harden’s stepback shot well, but as four Thunder players closed in on a rebound the ball bounced over their heads to the Rockets and Rivers didn’t miss the second opportunity.
On a night where George and Westbrook combined to shoot 1-of-6 in the fourth quarter, every defensive rebound became valuable to buy the Thunder extra possessions and keep the Rockets from additional opportunities. Couple the defensive rebounding issues with a pair of Westbrook turnovers in the Rockets’ fourthquarter surge, and the message became apparent.
The Thunder was in the Christmas spirit. Its gift? Second chances.