Houston Rockets: Portland Win Biggest of 2011-12
The Portland Trailblazers were down a man with center Marcus Camby injured, and LaMarcus Aldridge shot as poorly as he has in his NBA career, but those two facts should not diminish how important the Houston Rockets 107-105 overtime victory was on Saturday night. Although the notoriously late arriving Toyota Center crowd was sparse yet again (perhaps the Houston Texans’ playoff exit will shift focus to the Rockets now), Kyle Lowry continued to perform like an All-Star while pouring in iron man minutes and flirting with nightly triple-doubles.
The win over the San Antonio Spurs early in the season was nice, but the 5-7 Rockets battled and answered big Portland plays with blows of their own in a back-and-forth contest that bore the intensity and competitiveness of a playoff game. The Spurs game was over by the second quarter. This win might go a long way towards getting Houston to that elusive playoff plateau by the end of the season, as it showed fans that the Rockets have players good enough to step up and finish out tight games against good opponents. This was something the team had yet to prove this season in heartbreakingly close losses to the Oklahoma City Thunder and the Spurs at the AT&T Center, games in which Houston held double-digit leads. It appeared as if the same would happen on Saturday, but thanks to a few stellar contributions, the Rockets eked out a valuable victory. Here are five reasons Houston won:
1) Kyle Lowry. If he continues to perform like this, Lowry deserves a lifetime nod on this list and an All-Star bid without debate. His value to the team is supported by the excruciating number of minutes Kevin McHale has required of him in the two consecutive wins — almost 50 minutes versus the Blazers followed a 40-minute effort against Sacramento. The jury is still out on whether Lowry’s pigskin-certified body can withstand such heavy abuse, but the Rockets need him to exert those efforts nightly if they want to win enough games to be in the playoffs. Although Lowry has yet to achieve a triple-double this season, he has been maddeningly close and frighteningly consistent in each game. He scored 33 points, a season high, along with nine assists and eight rebounds Saturday night. These numbers have become routine for him. Can he continue to hold up and produce like this while playing such heavy minutes? And after a cold-blooded three to help send the game to overtime, Lowry might also be assuming a role as go-to man in the clutch.
2) Kevin Martin found a clutch gene. The efficient scorer’s numbers are down across the board in 2011-12, but with Lowry grabbing a bigger role, that is expected. The problem with Martin has been his disappearing act in clutch situations when Houston desperately needs a bucket. So it was refreshing Saturday night to see the diminutive two-guard take over down the stretch in OT when Lowry’s legs began to fail him, scoring Houston’s final six points, including a banked teardrop to give Houston the lead for good, and shooting 12-13 from the free throw line. Houston’s starting backcourt scored 61 points versus the Blazers. If the Rockets can continue to get production like that from Martin, such production should become the norm.
3) The return of Chase Budinger. The bouncing blonde from Arizona is usually an offensive spark for Houston, but he has been ingloriously trudging through a shooting slump in 2011-12 and lost his starting spot to a rookie. Last night, while Houston’s starters began to show fatigue, Budinger ran the floor and provided a welcome injection of energy off the bench, scoring 18 points and contributing a wealth of transition buckets.
4) Houston’s free throw shooting. In a game that was a dead heat in field goal percentage and individual scoring between both teams, it came down to free throw shooting in overtime, and Houston strode off triumphantly in that category. They made 24-28 as a team for a very effective 86 percent, trumping Portland’s 71 percent. The Rockets needed those extra buckets because the Blazers shot a nearly identical percentage from the floor and because French swingman Nicholas Batum was matching Lowry point for point throughout the contest. He poured in 29 points on 6-7 shooting from downtown and he also blocked four shots, including one at the end of regulation that prevented a potentially game-winning Martin layup.
5) LaMarcus Aldridge’s shooting woes. Aldridge is unquestionably Portland’s brightest star, and although he made a clutch jumper to send the game to overtime, his team could have used more makes through the rest of the contest. The former Texas star shot 7-21 from the field and missed a multitude of the pick-and-pop 17-footers he usually drains. The Rockets were lucky he wasn’t hot Saturday night or they would have faced difficulty winning this game.
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