Houston Rockets Squeak By OKC Thunder; Win 110-105

The Houston Rockets only had to wait one more game to get it together.

I suppose the negative statistics coming out of the Rockets awful start to the season was finally getting to them.

These guys managed to not only go 0-3 but lose by a 20-point margin or so in those games which was something that hadn’t been done in the NBA before…EVER!

That’s not the type of statistics I like to see and when ESPN feels the need to share such statistics, usually these types don’t bode well for Houston sports fans.

We didn’t think it was possible but somehow this team had managed to pull off such a feat.

But looking at last night’s defeat and figuring what the heck went wrong, it was all about their defense.

This team must remain committed to playing 48 minutes worth every night or problems will arise if their shots aren’t falling.

And, as we’ve seen, that’s been the case as of late.

They’ve pounded rims from gym to gym so hard, it’s tough to distinguish if there’s any orange paint left to denote where to put the ball in the hoop.

James Harden had been shooting about nine percent (3-for-33) up until tonight from behind-the-arc, so his shooting is just a small snippet of the big picture of what the team has been struggling with.

His percent from field goals wasn’t much better, holding at 22 percent.

But enough about the past, let’s talk about tonight.

The Rockets came out guns a-blazing but I still had an ubiquitous, radiant caveat that kept screaming from this team — the same happened last night.

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The intensity was there but it waned as things transitioned to the 2nd quarter.

After a series of runs — some in double-digits — the Oklahoma City Thunder took hold of the lead and did not relinquish for a good chunk of this game.

With 11 minutes to go in the third after the half was over, the Thunder took a 15-point, 69-54 lead before the Rockets team finally got their heads out of their rears and started to put together an impressive run to get themselves back into the game.

Then they started to slowly pick apart the Thunder defensively, with their shots starting to fall and offense starting to flow smoothly through Lawson with the Beard getting some touches on isolation plays.

I can’t believe they threw Steven Adams at him on that play as he just glided past the seven-footer as if he wasn’t there!

Not to mention the crowd-pleasing lob that Ty Lawson threw to Dwight Howard with 8:25 left, showing that this team did have some sort of sign of life.

And did they ever…

By the end of the third, the Rockets had taken the lead back with a 24-10 run under the belts going up over the Thunder 82-79.

Things got quite tight in the 4th with the teams changing leads like a teeter-totter of a see-saw but it was Trevor Ariza that came up big with a three-pointer with 3:40 left that put the Rockets up 102-99.