Houston Rockets: How They Obliterated The San Antonio Spurs
The Houston Rockets have finally arrived and ready to do battle with anybody!
The Houston Rockets have finally arrived and ready to do battle with anybody!
For the first time in 22 years, the Houston Rockets faced the San Antonio Spurs in a playoff series.
The last time that occurred was when the team won their 2nd of back-to-back championships for the city of Houston.
Is this a sign?
Before I get ahead of myself, the team played an excellent game and we saw what this team should like when everybody’s healthy and all cylinders are clicking.
And boy were they!
This team benefits the most when they have plenty of rest as opposed to previous teams that we’ve watched over the years.
With the Houston Rockets having nearly a week off, having not played a basketball game since last Wednesday, it was perfect time for the guys to rest, recuperate and regroup for this series.
As the R&B singer R. Kelly says, it seems like they were ready and the Houston Rockets took the Spurs to task early.
But just how did they do it?
Of course, the obvious was that the three-ball was falling, the Rockets shot 22-of-50 from behind-the-arc for 44 percent!
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To put into perspective in regard to the magnitude of how well they shot the ball from deep, the 22 three-pointers allowed were the most in Spurs history.
We made the Spurs look foolish out there and it looked as if Gregg Popovich was about have a coronary because his team wasn’t able to keep up with the Rockets’ frenetic pace.
What was another aspect of last night’s Game 1?
The ball movement…ohhhhhh….the ball movement!
It truly was the best I’d ever seen in a long time out this team, where all five guys were swinging it until they found the open man.
As a matter of fact, James Harden wasn’t looking to stuff his stat line as he no longer has Russell Westbrook in the way to compete with, he can just focuses on doing what the does best to help his team win through these playoffs.
Harden had 14 assists to go along with his 20 points indicating he was ultimate facilitator.
The team had 30 assists to the Spurs 19 in total.
Another factor was the emergence of Ryan Anderson and Clint Capela.
Anderson finally came alive from the three-point line, contributing 14 points while going 4-for-10 (40 percent) from our sweet spot.
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It goes to show that he’s fine and we hope that this trend continues this series.
Capela truly played one of the best games of career last night — he was blocking shots, grabbing boards and getting quite physical in the paint.
Not to mention, he was a recipient of multiple alley-oops from Harden.
He finished with 20 points, 13 rebounds and two blocks.
Nene was also a tremendous factor off the bench with his seven points and five rebounds.
He also was the enforcer — especially when Dewayne Dedmon started to get in Harden’s face and Nene allegedly grabbed by the neck and made it clear he shouldn’t be disrespecting his teammate like that.
Nene eventually got ejected for that but the game was clearly over by then as the game was clearly over by then.
Dedmon eventually got ejected himself for continuing to be disruptive so there’s that.
And also let’s not discount what Trevor Ariza did, chipping in 23 points, four rebounds and two steals — he helped with the barrage — and he certainly did his part to help this team win.
Eric Gordon and Lou Williams put up 11 points and 13 respectively, always being around to provide that badly-needed bucket when called upon.
With the Rockets being up by as much as 39 points and the Spurs not leading more than two points, this team did what it was supposed to do.
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What’s that?
Intense pace with a barrage of three-pointers that’s too much for the aging Spurs to keep up with.
We’re a lot younger than past teams and we literally ran the Spurs out of the gym eventually winning 126-99.
Now I doubt the Rockets will duplicate the same performance tomorrow night but I’m sure they’ll bring the same intensity.
We’ll have to see — see you Wednesday!
Go Rockets.