Houston Rockets Exterminate Charlotte Hornets 100-90

It’s the home stretch and the Houston Rockets have emerged from a stumble to nice recovery, sprinting toward the finish line!

Yes, I can’t believe it.

The 2014-15 season is almost at a close and this team has 55 wins — ensuring this is one of the best seasons in Rockets’ history.

It’s amazing how they’ve done it with all of the injuries that have piled up.

You can credit some success to James Harden, who has carried this team on his back and this team’s future success will be predicated on his.

The Houston Rockets and James Harden, two names that will be synonymous with each other for quite some time.

And rightfully so.

But you can’t discredit the way the rest of team has taken his lead and done whatever is asked — oftentimes more — to help the team win.

But it won’t be easy as the Rockets head toward the postseason because any match up they have will likely be a tough one because of little parity at the top of the Western Conference.

But, let’s focus on tonight as this is their second-to-last game of the season and their finale on the road.

The Rockets took on the 33-47 Charlotte Hornets, a team that is going nowhere after this week.

You’d think this would be a cinch of a opponent but you can never take games like these lightly because teams with nothing to play for are just as dangerous.

The types of teams that play spoiler want to have something positive to take out of such a season likely filled with negativity.

Nonetheless, let’s take a look at how they did.

The 1st quarter involved the Rockets being neck-and-neck with the Hornets.

We witnessed the Beard getting going early with 13 points by the end of the quarter.

And Troy Daniels, a former Rocket himself, stroked it a bit with a jumper and three-pointer that put the Hornets within one point of the Rockets with 54 seconds left. Rockets 23, Hornets 22

The Rockets continued to hold on and lead at the end of the 1st, 24-23.

At the start of the 2nd quarter, the Rox worked to build a lead with them up by as much as 10 with 7:39 left after Josh Smith connected on his second free throw — he made both.

But the Rockets got extremely cold and that allowed the Hornets to take a 13-2 run to take a 41-40 lead with 4:45 left to go after a Williams dunk on the drive.

The Rockets took the lead back by as much as six after Terrence Jones had a nice put-back dunk with 3:29 left in the 1st half. Rockets 47, Hornets 41

But the Hornets went on a 11-5 run to tie the game at 52-all at the end of the half.

No matter how hard the Rockets tried, they just couldn’t seem to put the Hornets in their rear-view mirror!

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The 3rd quarter involved the Rockets going up by as much as eight but the Hornets went on yet another run — this time 5-0 — to cut their deficit to three with 1:54 left after a Taylor driving hook.

There was also a brief period during that stretch where the Rockets continuously fouled Bismack Biyombo — a career 52.8 percent free-throw shooter — to slow the pace down and maintain their lead.

Biyombo made three out of his four free throws in two separate trips to the line but it had a somewhat adverse effect on the Hornets’ momentum as the Rockets lead 83-75 at the end of the third.

This was even after Jason Maxiell was put back in the game for Biyombo.

The 4th quarter involved the Rockets taking the lead for good with Clint Capela getting some quality minutes, he started the quarter with silky-smooth reverse layup, followed with some help by Corey Brewer turning on his after boosters to dunk his way to an 89-78 lead with 8:44 left.

The Rockets never really had to look back after that as they cruised the rest of the way to a 100-90 win despite shooting 25.7 percent from the three-point line.

Despite the team not being able to put them away early, they did so when it counted and got the “W” as a result.

Harden led the Rockets in scoring with 29 points, six rebounds and six assists while J-Smoove chipped in 16/11 and two blocks.

TJones had 10/11 and four blocks.

But the man of the night was Capela who hustled hard on both ends of the court and made the most of his 16 minutes.

He scored 10 points and snagged five rebounds with one block including hitting his first career free throw with 1:54 left in the 1st quarter. That happened to be the first point that he scored for the game as well.

He ended up going 2-for-4 at the charity stripe!