Defense? What’s defense?
Denver pours it on from inside, out, everywhere
DENVER — The Rockets could find scorers. They could stay within a long-shot chance. James Harden even found a way, with a final 3-pointer when the benches were about to be cleared, to keep his streak of 30-point games going.
But the Rockets never could come close to stopping the runaway train of the Denver Nuggets’ offense. In the latest collapse of the increasingly broken Rockets’ defense, the Nuggets demolished their nine-game losing streak to the Rockets, leading by as many as 20 points before finishing off a 136-122 victory Friday night.
The Nuggets made 62.6 percent of their shots, easily the best-shooting night of the season against the Rockets, including 14-of-31 from deep, never seeming threatened again after blowing the game open in a spectacular
first-half surge.
The Nuggets lit up the Rockets in the second quarter with their only difficulty seeming to be whether to take open 3s or easy layups. They opted for both.
The Nuggets rolled up 48 points in the quarter, the most the Rockets have surrendered in a quarter this season, beating the Rockets up the floor and with their ball movement and cuts in the halfcourt. As well as the Nuggets shot, they also encountered so little resistance that they hit 80 percent of their attempts, including six of eight 3-pointers in the quarter.
After falling behind by as many as 18 points, the Rockets did have the start of a run. Even that came with a cost with Eric Gordon putting in a pair of free throws and then taking a foul to stop the clock so he could limp off. (Gordon did not return, but he was available in the fourth quarter.)
Harden, who had missed eight consecutive shots since the first quarter, put in a 3-pointer. James Ennis finished a break, cutting the Rockets’ deficit to nine. The Nuggets just cranked up the offense again, running off a Harden missed 3 and a Harden turnover to finish breaks with a Torrey Craig slam and then a 3. With another Craig fast-break bucket, again off a missed Rockets’ 3, and then a Nikola Jokic drive, the Nuggets rushed the lead back to 18 points.
The Rockets maintained an outside chance to steal the win when Harden sank a 3-pointer with 4:16 left, leaving them within 11.
The Nuggets went directly to their All-Star. Jokic posted up P.J. Tucker to score inside. He cut to a layup. He put in a pair of free throws. He rushed the lead to 17 and offered a final reminder of how defenseless the Rockets had been.
Jokic finished one assist from his ninth tripledouble, getting 31 points and 13 rebounds. With Jamal Murray and Gary Harris, the Nuggets’ starting backcourt, out, Malik Beasley had a career-high 35 while Torrey Craig had a career-high 18.
After 24 games in which no one outscored Harden in a Rockets game, the Nuggets had two players top him.
The Rockets never defended anyone well enough to sustain a comeback. But that was true from the start when the Rockets scored so rapidly early that they led by 10 points and barely seemed to notice that the Nuggets were doing pretty much whatever they wished on the other end.
Giving up layups and open 3s was not a strategy that seemed built to last.
Feeling challenged by the Rockets’ fast start, the Nuggets hit back and kept hitting. While the Rockets relatively sauntered around the floor, the Nuggets moved themselves and the ball increasingly rapidly and then torched the Rockets.
The Rockets led by 10 when Tucker made the first bucket of the second quarter, but the Nuggets rarely needed to try a difficult shot. It took less than six minutes to take the lead and just 8½ minutes to maul the Rockets’ barely perceptible defense, 36-14. The Nuggets stretched the lead to 14, brought an 83-71 lead into the second half and barely needed two minutes of the second half to lead by 18.
Even when the Rockets could cut into the Nuggets’ leads, they didn’t defend well enough to challenge.