It’s a make or miss league, and tonight the Houston Rockets had their worst three-point shooting of the season, while the Dallas Mavericks had a red, hot shooting night of Rocket killer Tim Hardaway and a Luka-like performance from Luka. Doncic to the Rockets 113-100.
Hardaway finished with 30 points and 7 rebounds on 11-14 shots from the field and 8-10 from deep, while Luka had his best game of the season so far, with 33 points, 16 rebounds and 11 assists, and Houston could only not quite keeping up.
Despite Dallas being the second night of a rugby player, it was actually the Rockets who came out slow and listless to start the game, and they struggled to find their rhythm against an abundance of bad calls, including two early techniques on DeMarcus Cousins, and one that was highly questionable, which had Cousins pushed out to set the tone for the night.
The Rockets were 33-21 under a quarter and 61-49 at halftime, but showed some slaughter in the third quarter to get inside 72-70 at some point, leveling the game at 85 with about 10 minutes to go into fourth place, but with both James Harden and John Wall shooting the ball at night, Houston just couldn’t hang with the Mavs next to the piece.
The Rockets shot just 39 percent as a team and were just 11-40 from outside the arc tonight, and you are not going to beat many teams that shoot it that way. Dallas sometimes played pretty good defense, but the Rockets also missed a lot of shots they normally make, and that told the story of the game.
Christian Wood led all of Houston’s scorers with 23 points, 7 rebounds, a steal and a block at 8-15 from the field, but he was 0-5 from deep. Harden finished with 21 points, 10 assists and 2 steals, but he was only 5-17 off the field and 3-11 off three. He was consistently caught and doubled by the Mavs, and the Rockets just could not make Dallas pay, as John Wallis’ running mate John Harden ended his career as a Rocket with his worst game so far, with just 14 points, 4 rebounds, and 4 assists, at 4-10 from the field and 1-3 from deep.
In addition, the Rockets got 20 points, 5 rebounds and 2 assists from Eric Gordon, but no other Houston player ended up in double figures. Cousins actually looked like he was the first for a big night dominating the Dallas reserves, and passed in just 3 minutes of action for 4 points, 3 rebounds and 2 blocks before being sent off. It was an important moment in the game.
You have these kinds of shooting nights in the NBA, and Houston’s defense is not tight enough at this point to make up the nights when they undergo these shooting interruptions, although the D did sometimes show a glimpse of what we would expect. , which forced 15 total revenue from the Mavs and really looks like they put it together in the third quarter before the bottom fell out in the fourth quarter.
Houston falls to 2-3 on the season, and 2-1 with the meat of their grill. They return to action with the Indiana Pacers on Wednesday night.