ROCKETS COME OUT FLAT TO OPEN SEASON, GET BLOWN OUT BY NUGGETS AT TOYOTA CENTER
Offense, defense in a shambles during inauspicious start
Rockets coach Kevin McHale searched his memory of the disaster just completed, through all the parts of basketball from baseline to baseline that could be considered.
The Rockets had waited five months for this night, to finally remove the taste of last season’s final defeat in the Western Conference finals. And then they washed it out with raw sewage.
But after the Rockets were demolished by the Denver Nuggets 105-85 on Wednesday night at Toyota Center, replacing months of counting themselves among the NBA’s elite with the wreckage of an
opening-night crash, there had to be something positive McHale could say.
As his team had all night, McHale came up empty.
“We had no movement,” he said. “We had no attack. We had no pace. We had no …” No chance? Finally, after a long pause, McHale gave up the search.
“I can’t think of anything we did well,” he said. “We did not play up to a level that’s even remotely what we’ll have to do to be the type of team we want to be.”
The Rockets have openly said they want to be the league’s best. But against a Denver team presumed to be rebuilding — and retooling itself around 19-yearold point guard Emmanuel Mudiay — they were outplayed in every way.
It took eight attempts and nearly five minutes for the Rockets to get their first field goal of the season. By then, they trailed by 11 points.
Things only got worse in the second half as the issues that had been dismissed as mere preseason kinks became enormous holes. The Nuggets’ big men easily cut to the rim, with Denver getting five dunks or layups before the Rockets got their first field goal.
The Rockets repeatedly left Danilo Gallinari open as if they were unaware he could shoot and did not notice as he put up a gamehigh 23 points, including 14 in the second half.
The Rockets moved the ball slowly. They took early, often forced shots. They had sloppy, unforced turnovers.
For most of the night, they did not play hard.
“They shot it much better than we did,” McHale said. “They moved it better than we did. They executed better than we did. They played harder than we did. Really, there wasn’t anything I could look at and say we did better than they did.”
James Harden made just six of 21 field-goal attempts and was 2-for-12 from the 3-point line, often settling for shots early in the shot clock. Ty Lawson was 3-for-10 and went 0-for-5 and without an assist in the second half. Trevor Ariza, Corey Brewer and Pat Beverley — players McHale had called his most consistent of the preseason — were a combined 7-for-31.
“We just didn’t play well,” Harden said. “We just didn’t get a lot of shots to fall. A couple lapses on defense, pick-and-roll coverage … the good thing about it is it’s only Game 1. We have 81 more to get better.”
The issues of the first game, however, were not unlike the warning signs of the preseason. Guards could not pressure the ball. Big men were slow to rotate. The pace getting into the halfcourt offense and moving the ball resembled that of a lunchtime pick-up game.
The best the Rockets could do was rebound their misses.
“They came with more intensity than we did,” Lawson said. “You could see it from the start. We’ll get back to work and figure it out. We just can’t give away a game like this at home.”
With Golden State due in town Friday, Dwight Howard will be freed from the one-game suspension he served Wednesday for flagrant playoff fouls.
If he watched at home, his punishment might have become cruel and unusual. But after McHale could not find a positive, Harden did.
“I guess the only great thing about it,” he said, “is that it is only one game.”