As Eric Gordon leaned toward the contact that never came, launching his off-balance jumper with little choice, he likely felt the miss coming.
He bolted to the rim and launched himself to take the rebound and slam it home in one stunning motion. Minutes later, Gerald Green put in a 3-pointer to finish a three-shot possession.
Manufacturing points in increasingly odd and unlikely ways, however, could only get the Rockets so far. It had worked long enough to keep the Rockets in front through most of night, but with the game on the line, the Rockets put it in Chris Paul's hands.
With the Blazers within three, Paul took over, driving the Rockets through the final 3 ½ minutes and to a 121-112 win Wednesday at Toyota Center.
With the Blazers within a 3-pointer, Paul hit a jumper and then set up Clint Capela with a lob. With 1:45 left, Paul put in a 3-pointer for a seven-point Rockets lead.
With that, he added a more inventive basket, driving to hang in the air and scoop in a flip off the backboard straight from a game of HORSE.
When he was through, Paul had scored a season-high 37 points with Gordon scoring 30 as the Rockets' backcourt, sans James Harden, outscored the Blazers' high-powered combination of Damian Lillard and C.J. McCollum, 67-53.
Paul added 11 assists and seven rebounds. Gordon had his second 30-point game in the Rockets' past four after reaching 30 just twice in his first 109 games with the Rockets.
That was enough to overcome the very shaky shooting along the way as the Rockets found ways to score their way to the win, anyway.
Until those closing minutes, the Rockets could not shoot consistently enough to pull away, keeping the Blazers at arm's length, but never leading by more than 12 in the third quarter. By then, however, it was unclear if they would have enough big men remaining to finish the game.
With Nene out for a fourth consecutive game with a bruised knee, Capela spent the night in foul trouble. Tarik Black provided a significant lift off the bench, running pick-and-roll with Paul effectively. With 1:35 left in the third quarter, he finished a dunk but took a hard right from the Trail Blazers' Ed Davis.
Black remained down on the floor through the long video review that ruled the foul a flagrant-1. But he left the game with an abrasion of his right eye. Paul made Black's free throw and P.J. Tucker scored to make it a five-point Rockets possession to a 10-point lead.
The Rockets just struggled all night to keep things working offensively.
Whenever the Rockets seemed in position to get their offense in gear and begin to pull away in the first half, they bogged down again. But that was still more than the Blazers could say because they never seemed ready to roll.
The Rockets especially seemed in position to a safe cushion late in the half. After setting up Black at the rim, Paul put in a pair of jumpers, the latter through a foul. When he passed to a cutting Black in pick-and-roll, Black slammed home his bucket with extra violence, bringing the crowd and the Rockets' bench to its feet. When he tacked on a free throw, Black had 11 first-half points, two shy of his season high for a game, and the Rockets had a 14-point lead.
The Rockets, however, could not string together buckets. They missed their final eight attempts of the first half, many from open looks, with three turnovers in that three minute run to nowhere.
The Blazers did not do much with that opening, reducing the Rockets' halftime lead to 55-45, but they did show signs of finding their usual offense as the half dragged on.
The Rockets might not have been able to complain with a double-digit lead when shooting 36.5 percent, their second-worst shooting half of the season. With a 12-1 record when opponents fail to score 50, the Rockets had held Portland well short. They even survived the foul trouble with Black finishing the half with four fouls, Capela three.
They just seemed certain to have to find their usual offense somewhere along the way. In the final three minutes, they finally did.