SPORTS
Rockets suffer third straight loss, a 130-101 rout at hands of Pelicans.
The Rockets’ small ball never looked so small. Worse, it was their best option.
Once again, for whatever the Rockets found to give themselves a chance, what they were missing was conspicuous and impossible to overcome.
On Monday, the Rockets were missing guards and the ballhandling and playmaking they provide, leading to an offensive crash.
On Tuesday, they could not overcome the missing centers. With Christian Wood out and DeMarcus Cousins ineffective, the Rockets were crushed on the boards and pounded in the paint until the Pelicans finished off a 130-101 romp at the Smoothie King Center in New Orleans. It sent the Rockets to a third straight loss to match their longest skid of the season.
The Pelicans’ scoring and their 60 points in the paint were the most the Rockets (11-13) have allowed this season.
New Orleans (11-12) spent the first half cleaning up the glass to overwhelm the Rockets with secondchance points. It spent the second half, especially when the Rockets rallied to within eight points in the third quarter, going to the rim until it pounded the Rockets into submission.
The Rockets, playing their fifth game in seven nights, eventually seemed to hit a wall in the fourth quarter. But even before that, the defense that had driven a third-quarter rally and kept them in the game was beginning to crack.
A 22-7 Pelicans run took the lead to 23 and cleared the benches early. But even before that, while battling the combination of two out of Zion Williamson, Steven Adams and Willy Hernangomez inside (even with Williamson and Adams playing just 21 minutes each) guard Josh Hart came in to grab a career high 17 rebounds.
No Rockets player had double-digit rebounds. John Wall (25) and Eric Gordon (23) combined for 48 points, but the rest of the Rockets were a combined 19 of 49 from the field. Brandon Ingram made 9 of 13 shots to lead the Pelicans with 22 points, with Williams scoring 20 points in 21 minutes and Hart, who was questionable to play with back spasms, posting 20 points to go with his career night on the boards.
The Rockets were dominated on the boards in the first half, turning a close game into an 18-point deficit. They trailed by 20 midway through the third quarter but rallied.
But when the Pelicans hit back, the Rockets’ crumbled. They had been pushed around all night.
A night after Rockets coach Stephen Silas at halftime showed possessions in which his players did not even strike a defensive stance, there was no mystery about what fundamental would fill the break.
The Rockets could not come close to keeping the Pelicans, who won their fourth straight, off the offensive boards. That is tough for most of the league. New Orleans’ average of 15.5 second-chance points per game leads the NBA.
On Tuesday, however, even with Williamson limited by foul trouble to seven minutes, the Pelicans topped that by halftime.
The most egregious Rockets’ failure to box out came when Hart got the rebound of his own missed free throw. When Hart put in his follow jumper in the lane through a Danuel House Jr. foul, he completed a 17-0 run that needed less than three minutes to rush to a 61-43 lead.
The Rockets finished the half with a bit of a flurry, reducing the lead to 63-50 at halftime. But even that brought a reminder of the other fundamental shortcoming in the first half, one that could not be corrected by a video review.
When Wall ended the second quarter missing a free throw, he was 0 for 4 from the line in the half, the Rockets were just 4 of 12 while the Pelicans, the worst free-throw shooting team in the NBA, went 13 of 14.
The Rockets had scored well enough considering how much trouble that had hitting shots beyond the lane. Other than Gordon, who made 3 of 5 3-ponters, they were 1 of 12 from beyond the arc.
They had defended the Pelicans well enough, holding them to 38.3 percent shooting on first shots. But while giving away points on one end, the Rockets allowed second shots on the other, making it all they could do to avoid a first-half blowout.
They were pushed to that brink midway through the third quarter, trailing by 20 when Silas turned to his bench and a small lineup, getting the defensive energy to turn things around.
The Rockets closed to within eight but could not make the 3s — missing 4 of 5 to close the quarter — to finish that run, heading to the fourth quarter down 11 and already seeming to be running out of time, stops and hope.