Rockets in the rain
Well, okay, the rain stopped before the tipoff, but the Rockets kept coming. Twenty-two seconds in, Etan Thomas gave Luis Scola a thwap that resulted in stitches, but the Rockets kept coming. the Thunder put together a nine-point lead by halftime, but the Rockets kept coming. In the end, Rick Adelman’s band of scrappers pulled out a 100-91 win, Houston’s second win over Oklahoma City this season.
Carl Landry, tapped to fill in for Scola, responded with 21 points and 10 rebounds. In fact, the Houston bench was good for 48 points and 31 boards. The Rockets seriously outrebounded the Thunder, recording 46 total and 23 off the offensive glass. This is how Houston managed to win this with a lousy 40.4-percent shooting percentage: they got lots of second- and even third-chance points. It didn’t hurt that they missed only one free throw all night.
The Thunder did well from behind the stripe, missing two of 20, and shot a respectable 48 percent, but they gave up 19 turnovers — Aaron Brooks pulled off five steals all by himself — and OKC was futile from the three-point circle, not hitting any until literally the last minute, when Serge Ibaka unexpectedly put one through. Kevin Durant got his usual 25, Russell Westbrook added 20, and the Thunder did manage to block nine shots, but it wasn’t nearly enough to offset the 19 extra shots the Rockets put up.
Weirdly, Oklahoma City and Houston are the only two teams in the conference with better records on the road than at home: they’re both 5-4 traveling, 4-4 at home. And the Rockets continue on to the West Coast, while the Thunder wait for the Sixers to arrive. December is going to be fairly strange, I suspect.
