This is a kind of glass half full win. The glass isn’t entirely full, but nor is it entirely empty. It’s definitely better than a close loss by a reverse of this score. Tonight the Rockets tied their season series with Charlotte. That’s pretty good, considering how well the Horncats have played lately and that they’ve seen this very hot Hornets team twice in their past few games. Tonight’s loss brought the Hornets down to 8-2 over their last 10 games. The Rockets remain a solid B at 6-4.
The Hornets
average over 115 points per game. The Rockets held them to 101, with defense we have not really seen since early in the season. Half full!
I wonder if we haven’t seen as much of that defense in the past month or six weeks because it’s an exhausting way to do things in the NBA, hoping you can hold opponents to around 100 points, when NBA average scoring is 114. With the All Star Break the Rockets returned re-energized perhaps, because they totaled 23 “stocks” with 15 steals and eight blocks. Half full, right? Also, half empty, as it’s difficult to believe the Rockets will get so many stocks every night.
The Rockets won despite shooting 28% from three point range, on a goodly number of open shots. Half full! But they started the game on pace to shoot about 40 3pt shots after the first half, but reverted to form and ended up shooting 32. Which is above their second lowest in the NBA season average, at least.
The Hornets shot 10 more 3pt shots, and they didn’t make they at a much better rate than the Rockets. But those 10 extra three pointers more or less kept the Hornets in the game late, when they really should have returned to their papery nest for the night.
Kevin Durant, or perhaps “Mr. Dickerson”, had a splendid night. He played a relatively low 36 minutes. He scored 35pts on 14-20 shooting, with 8rbs, 4ast, 1stl, and 3blk. He was 2-4 from three. Also everything else was a high degree of difficulty two point shot. He didn’t get the ball as often at the top of the 3pt arc, which reduced turnovers and sped up the offense slightly, so glass half full, overall.
KD didn’t end up hurting the Rockets, as he has some of his nights with a truly godawful number of live ball turnovers. In fact, this might have been one of his best games as a Rocket. Half full!
Half empty, this is good, because the Rockets definitely needed every tough, contested, mid range jumper he could provide. The next highest Rockets scorer was Jabari Smith Jr, who had a nice night, at 15pts on 6-9. Sengun had 13, and continues to struggle somewhat on offense, only going 6-16, but totaling a team high 7 assists. Reed Sheppard also had 13, but on 5-12 shooting. Reed seems to be able to either make threes, or twos, but not both at the same time. Still, his 24 minutes were the highest +/- of any bench player, and his impact, despite the half emptiness of his 3pt shot tonight, was positive.
I do have a “glass actually full” player tonight. Perhaps you weren’t expecting it to be Dorian Finney-Smith, but it was, overall. He didn’t post a huge statline, but a useful one, and he was a useful player. For the first time DFS looked like a veteran NBA player. Hopefully that’s what the Rockets will get going forward, as Josh Okogie seems to be the latest player banished to Imeberia. He might be hurt, but if not, playing him would have meant playing 10 players, and that’s straight insane.
Let’s be happy with this win, over a team that’s been one of the best in NBA over the past eight weeks. The Rockets are in third place, but also in a virtual with Denver in the Western Conference after Jamal Murray missed a game tying, and hard grifted, free throw with less than a second left in regulation.
