Houston Rockets Report: Tension Between Patrick Beverley And Dwight Howard?

The Houston Rockets are 55 games into the season and are still holding on to a respectable 38-17 record.

Although they’ve only won six of their last 14 games, this team still has amazing chemistry and they seem to knuckle down and concentrate when things get tough.

They’ve had some devastating losses as of late, including the 113-108 loss to the Atlanta Hawks last Thursday.

They had a 20-point lead early in the 4th quarter and they allowed Tim Hardaway Jr. to take over like a mad man and robbed the Houston Rockets of something they likely were going to possess — a win.

There will be nights like those and I fully understand but the WAY they lost that game was a tough pill to swallow.

Consequently, the Rockets kept on trucking and defeated the Chicago Bulls in a 121-117 overtime win the next night.

Could the 2015-16 Houston Rockets team have the ability to rise above all the fray and band together?

Absolutely not.

We all knew the chemistry was not blending as well as it should as the talent that was assembled continue to underachieve.

Speaking of chemistry, Dwight Howard was, of course, in town this past Thursday as a member of the Hawks.

As you know, Howard signed a three-year, $70.5 million deal after declining to pick up his $26 million player option, the remaining year he had on his contract for the Rockets.

But here’s where it gets interesting.

Before the start of the Hawks vs. Rockets game, Howard went into the now opposing locker room to visit with his former teammates.

On paper, it seems like a nice gesture but necessarily the one you want to make when you’re in competition.

According to David Aldridge of NBA.com, Beverley was not too thrilled with the Howard “reunion” in his locker room.

Patrick Beverley reportedly walked out of the locker room saying this with strong conviction:

"“Get Dwight Howard out of our locker room,” he said forcefully, according to several witnesses. “I’m serious.”"

Now there may nothing more than Beverley not wanting someone from another team in the locker room, highly-regarded as a sanctuary in every sense of the word.

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But Beverley and Howard had a brief exchange in the 4th quarter, where Howard bumped into Beverley — seemingly purposely — on an out-of-bounds play when the Rockets were up 94-75 on the Hawks.

The proof may be in the pudding, take a look at this clip here:

This caused Beverley to fume, indicating that things may not be as rosy as we think.

James Harden continues to reiterate that there’s no bad blood between the two — and that may be true — but Beverley is the type of guy that is going to let you know how he feels no matter what.

All in all, it was better for Howard to go as both teams are enjoying success respectively.

But based off of this report, the two aforementioned guys that once were budding teammates, could be foes moving forward.

You can think what you want about this situation but this confirms what I knew all along — everybody wasn’t dancing around singing “kumbaya” and there was a problem of ensuring that the personalities of a dozen or so guys meshed together.

All I know is that I like the team we have now and I hope we continue march toward the ultimate goal of winning a championship, which is the most important goal to me.

We’ll see how that goes.

Go Rockets.

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