Well, just like that the Houston Rockets’ time in Las Vegas and the NBA Cup is over with. In one of the poorest displays of offense from the squad all season, the end result was little to no surprise, a 111-96 loss to the hands of the now 20-5 OKC Thunder.
Quite frankly, the game was never pretty…at least for Houston. But, as we’ve seen all year long, pretty isn’t necessarily Ime Udoka’s way of coaching winning basketball. The only issue is tonight, grit, defense, and hustle wasn’t enough to grind out the win. Starting off slowly and sloppy offensively, this game seemed like a copy paste of every close Rockets game this year. Bad offense, but great defense to keep it low scoring and even. A 20-18 first quarter score is exactly what can show for that as each team shot under 30% from the field and 25% from three.
Again, stifling defense, awful offense. This trend would continue on for the rest of the first half as the score sat at 42-41 in Houston’s favor. In each teams worst half of offense and shooting all season, it seemed like whoever could get some sort of run going first would be the winner of the game, and that was in fact the case. After a slow and quiet first half, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (32 points) led the sudden surge of offense in the third quarter for the Thunder, scoring 12 of the teams 34 in the third. However, Lu Dort was right there as well, hitting three shots from beyond the arc and adding 11 in the 3Q himself.
The fourth quarter was what truly mattered to the game though as Houston eventually cut the deficit down to just five. An 8-0 run led almost single handedly by Shai afterwards put the Rockets hopes away as the game never looked reachable from that point on. A ten point quarter from Isaiah Hartenstein put the game away, leading to the eventual 15 point deficit and loss to OKC in the NBA Cup semis.
Losing four major categories in the stat sheet didn’t help either, with those being FG%, 3P%, FTs, and TO’s, all of which were quite easily in favor of the Thunder. Another main issue of the loss was the lack of productivity shooting wise from Houston’s starting lineup. Alperen Sengun (13 points), Jalen Green (12 points), and Fred VanVleet (8 points), each shot under 38% from the floor and combined for a -27. That just cannot be the case in a game of such high caliber, a playoff level game. If Houston wants to win, they need their main scorers to take over and control the tempo and pace, something that was lacking heavily against OKC.
The main bright spots of the game had to be Amen Thompson (19 points, 7 rebounds) and crashing the offensive glass. Amen played a very solid game on both sides, starting off slow and picking it up as the game went on. And as for the offensive rebounding aspect, Houston pulled in 19!!, their second highest total of the season so far. As we all know though, you need more productivity and points to beat a team like OKC than we saw Houston put out tonight against a divisional rival.
So, with the loss tonight, the Rockets are now eliminated from the NBA Cup, moving to 17-9 on the year now and 1-2 against the Thunder. Their next game will be Thursday, December 19 at Home against the New Orleans Pelicans at 7:00 CST.
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