James Harden was out of the game for the entirety of the run, which is a thing that is already coming up a lot. He dominated the offensive boards and closed off the paint to the Clippers. Dwight, who seemed on the verge of a nervous breakdown a half hour previous, moved a pipe in his heart and started funneling all his spare energy productively. Jason Terry, who has never been a particularly good defender and is now 37 years old, got in a stance and bodied up Chris Paul, making penetration harder than it has seemed all series. Other things were more subtle, if still strange. Josh Smith, who is absolutely horrible at shooting three pointers, sunk three of them in the quarter, including a step-back three that bent logic significantly enough to cause permanent damage. Corey Brewer scored 15 points, which is the sort of thing your Basketball Experts tend to notice. I went back and re-watched it in an attempt to get a sense of what happened during the Rockets' 23-2 run. Photo by Richard Mackson-USA TODAY Sports.Īnd when they came back, they didn't creep back: they stormed back, then they kept storming, and by the end of the game the Clippers were losers by a comfortable margin that felt even larger than it wound up being. When Griffin made an unbelievable flying spinning back-to-the-basket layup, there was no sense that the Rockets were anything more than completely done and back to their natural state, the team that got smeared on their home floor in Game 4 subtly reading hotel reviews on Tripadvisor on their phones while the clock ran out on their season. James Harden shoved archenemy Matt Barnes after he got wrapped up on a fast break. Dwight Howard picked up a flagrant foul after he tackled Blake Griffin and then threw his hands up, as if to say "No, I was blocking the shot, you see, with that tackle." A few possessions later, Howard nabbed a tech for pushing DeAndre Jordan after a rebound had cleared. You know, awful basketball things.Īll this bad basketball was suffused with bad vibes, and the palpable frustration of a bunch of angry dudes who could see their season ending right in front of them.
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Pablo Prigioni forcing a three-point shot on a fast break. Possession after possession drowned in ineffectual ball movement ending in contested jump shots or, worse, jump shots taken by Josh Smith. Because ho boy did the Rockets look terrible in that third quarter, even worse than the score indicates. It did not make much more sense as it was happening. In the third quarter, the Rockets stopped scoring and were terrible in the fourth, out of nowhere, for no reason that can be divined by looking at the line score, they absolutely raked the Clippers and ran away with the game. What does this score tell you? Well, both teams played about even through the first half. The Clippers' astonishing fourth quarter collapse made absolutely no goddamn intuitive sense, even as it was happening. I mention this game as a point of comparison because what happened in Los Angeles on Thursday night was different. Read More: DeMarre Carroll, Self-Made Man
You can see the Clippers get burnt early, establish a normal-ish rhythm in the middle quarters, and then turn it around in the fourth while the Grizzlies flattened out into playing not-to-lose. Even if that comeback was unexpected, it makes sense in retrospect.