The Rockets lost in the NBA nightcap tonight against the lowly Sacramento Kings in overtime, 125-124. The Rockets always seem to have a stupid loss to the Kings in them, every year, just as they have a ridiculous
loss to Utah in them every year.
This week was a bit special in terms of absurd losses. Coming off a convincing win in Denver (again) the Rockets dropped a very winnable game against Sacramento. Yes, it was a back to back, but other teams manage not to be awful in back to backs. Maybe it’s play style, or Steven Adams sitting out, but whatever it is, they need to fix it, as there are plenty more coming.
Of the three overtime losses, one isn’t completely pathetic. The Rockets lost to Denver in OT, with some really iffy calls by Zach Zarba, as the NBA’s own Last Two Minute Report on that game will confirm. We don’t really need to say much more about that one.
The other two? In one the Rockets managed to blow a 25 point lead against the New Orleans Pelicans. In this one they blew a lead as well, though not as big. Tonight they let the Kings hang around, didn’t play with much cohesion, or force, lost another late.
Every single overtime game means your team had a chance to win it. The Rockets won none of their recent overtime games.
I suppose we can talk about this game in particular, but I’m not sure how illuminating it will be. I’d rather cover what I see as key problems.
First the good news. The Rockets should have won the last four games. They were in a position, in some cases an excellent position, to do so. The bad news is they managed to lose all three games that went to OT.
In other good news, Tari Eason returned, and looked good over all. He had 16 points in 16 minutes on 6-8 shooting, and 3-3 from three point range. Minutes he takes from Josh Okogie, and Aaron Holiday might generally benefit the Rockets. If he plays anything like this on offense, in 30 plus minutes, he’s a huge help. He also, according to Ime Udoka’s post game comments, left his man on the 3pt make from DeMar DeRozen that sealed the victory for the Kings. That’s probably post injury rust for Eason.
The Rockets are in a tough part of their schedule, and right now the breaks are beating them.
This isn’t to be bleak, we’ve seen the Rockets also play up to their competition, yet show a certain lack of closing ability. The only game where they were truly outplayed this season, to me, was against the Spurs. Otherwise the Rockets had a big role in beating themselves, every time.
The rest of this game was the Rockets playing down to their competition. Frankly they just haven’t earned that status yet, as losses to Utah, Sacramento, New Orleans and Dallas demonstrate.
In this game the Rockets lost the rebounding battle to a team playing a rookie center, and essentially one real power forward. They made mental mistakes. They missed defensive assignments. While they didn’t have an astonishing number of turnovers, the ones they had were awful.
There are some good things here, but who really deserves a pat on the back in this miserable, unnecessary loss? They shot well, rebounded poorly, and failed to execute and close this one out.
The Rockets can hope to learn from this, though in terms of the past week, the signs aren’t encouraging.
