Harden, defense lead the way
Star flirts with triple-double as team clamps down to hold season’s first opponent below 100 points
James Harden scores 42 points in victory against Bulls.
CHICAGO — The Rockets finally seemed to have gotten the message.
After all the attention paid to making their most generous defense a bit stingier, they finally stopped someone and just kept on getting stops.
They stopped the Bulls. They stopped themselves. If a pipe burst at United Center, they likely could have stopped the running water.
The Rockets racked up 15 turnovers in the first half, nearly as many as they had averaged per game and enough to keep them from pulling away and keep the game tight. When they took care of the ball long enough to shoot it, the rout was on.
The Rockets rolled through the second half, leading by as much as 28 before cruising to a 117-94 win Saturday, giving them a three-game winning streak for the first time this season.
“We had a lot of turnovers early,” Rockets forward P.J. Tucker said. “Once we cut those turnovers down, we knew we’d get back in the flow because even with the turnovers, we were still up and right there. We knew once we cut that out, we’d be good.”
They had dramatically improved their defense in that stretch, though the misfiring opponents helped. But they first had to stop giving away the ball to let their offense do the rest.
“I don’t know about not turning it over so much — 24 (turnovers). I don’t think we could have turned it over any more,” Rockets coach Mike D’Antoni said. “They missed shots. We just have to keep getting better.”
Many of their nine second-half turnovers, however, were with the rout already assured. With just three turnovers in the third quarter, the Rockets blasted the Bulls 36-18, leading by as much as 22 along the way.
It helped that the Bulls shot so horribly from deep, especially when the Rockets stopped giving them the headstart that came with live-ball turnovers. In the third quarter, the Bulls made just 6 of 23 shots (26.1 percent) and hit just 1 of 9 3-pointers on their way to a 4-of-32 shooting night from 3.
James Harden alone had twice as many 3s, hitting 9 of 19 on his way to 42 points to go with 10 rebounds and nine assists. That all seemed inevitable, once the
Rockets kept the ball long enough for him to attack the array of defenders, zones and double-teams the Bulls sent at him.
“We knew that we turned the ball over too much and there were a lot of buckets we just gave them because of us,” Harden said. “In the second half, we wanted to limit their easy buckets and limit our turnovers and we did that. Obviously, we made shots. But you do those two things, you have a better chance to win the games.”
At halftime, the Rockets led by just one. Harden had 20 firsthalf points but missed his final four shots with three turnovers in the final four minutes to take a clear understanding of what needed to be done into the locker room. He did not commit another turnover until his final moments on the floor when he tried to send a pass inside to center Clint Capela.
That never got there. But for a third-consecutive game, Capela had a season-high in rebounds, finishing with 20 to go with his 16 points and four blocked shots. He played nearly 42 minutes in the Rockets’ effort to run him into shape.
“Clint, I thought that was his best game of the year,” D’Antoni said. “He dominated the rebounding and the defense. He was good.”
Even with the help the Rockets provided Chicago in the first half, its 37.8 percent shooting was the worst against them this season. The Bulls were the first team to fail to reach 100 points against the Rockets.
“Our effort, plain and simple,” Russell Westbrook, who had 26 points with seven rebounds, said of the defensive improvement. “I thought we did a good job early. They made some tough shots. We stayed with it defensively. We stayed with our defensive scheme and it worked out for us.
“We just have to be smart with the ball, stay down on those jump passes, make the simple plays.”
Once they did that, the 3s poured in, the lead grew and the Rockets settled for stopping only one team at a time.