As much as the Rockets enjoyed taking a pair of close games decided in the final minute, in Dallas they preferred to pull their starters early. They would have liked to have that done earlier.
With the Mavericks swarming to the lane, the Rockets had no trouble getting open 3s, hit their first six of them and led by 13 in less than five minutes. From that point on, their greatest challenge was reminding themselves that they could not do that all night.
Eventually, the Rockets cranked up their defense so that when James Harden and Clint Capela provided a fourth-quarter push, the lead swelled to 20 and they could sit out the final four minutes. If they perhaps should have finished off the Mavericks a few minutes earlier no longer mattered, if it ever did.
- 1. As often as Mike D’Antoni has said he does not concern himself with the quantity of 3-pointers, only with the quality of the 3s they get and take, every now and then, they offer a reminder. The Mavericks’ defense, determined always to defend the lane first, gave up open looks and the Rockets fired away. When they made their first six 3-pointers, they saw little reason to stop. Even when the Rockets went 2 of 15 in the second quarter, which is a remarkable number of attempts even by their standards, they kept on shooting. The Rockets eventually put up 51 3-pointers, the 19th time in the past two seasons they have attempted 50 in a game and the 22nd time in league history any team has. Along the way, however, they did more than run the lead up to 20. Eric Gordon, who had missed all 16 3-pointers he put up in the previous two games, went 4 of 7 from deep. Trevor Ariza, who went 1 of 2 in his first game back from a two-game suspension, made 5 of 14, scoring 23 points. James Harden was six of 10, his most in his past eight games, moving him to 16 of 32 in his past two games. With a date ahead against the New Orleans Pelicans and their bookend All-Stars DeMarcus Cousins and Anthony Davis, the Rockets will likely need their 3-point shooting to be sharp. Wednesday’s rout might have been a step in that direction.
- 2. The Rockets still turn on their defense in spurts, but it is better to have occasionally than not at all. They still need to develop the habits to defend at their best more consistently. They did not get it going until the second quarter when their own shooting began misfiring and they felt the need to defend with the intensity they did not show in the first quarter when they built their double-digit lead. The Rockets have held three of their past four opponents shy of 100, moving to 16-2 when opponents don’t score 100 points against them this season (18-0 last season.) They even climbed back into the top 10 in defensive rating, though just barely at No. 10, with plenty of work to do to get back to the top five where they sat during the winning streak. To get there, the Rockets do not need to defend better than they have in the past four games. They need to defend as they have, but for longer and more consistently. They have shown that they can. The time is likely to come when they will have to.
- 3. James Harden asked the question that the Rockets have since the All-Star reserves were named and Chris Paul’s name was not mentioned. “What are we rewarding?” Harden said. The Rockets record when Paul has played – now 24-5 – was not enough to overcome missing 17 games with a pair of injuries. There is a point in which too many missed games should factor into awards and honors. Durability is part of achievement. But winning should be difficult to ignore, especially in a vote of coaches. It’s not complicated. It is not diminished because he plays with an MVP candidate, not when one team (the Warriors) have four representatives, including a pair of former MVPs that are All-Star starters. There is also precedent for a worthy player that missed much of the season to be selection, with Kevin Durant playing in 19 games when he was chosen in 2015. Paul’s exclusion, along with a few others, does show again the rosters seems small in a 30-team league. The All-Star teams are the only NBA rosters with just 12 players. Rosters have as many as 15 players with as many as 13 active for each game. As Paul said, there are snubs every season. But he likely did not expect to be among them. The Western Conference guards selected as reserves – Klay Thompson, Russell Westbrook and Damian Lillard – are All-Star caliber players. Westbrook, the reigning MVP, is pretty automatic. But Paul has a better winning percentage than all five guards to play in the All Star game. That should have been enough for coaches to decide he has played enough.