Yao gets defended by the Trail Blazer’s Ha Seung-Jin Sunday night in Portland. Yao got into foul trouble, fouled out, and scored only 9 points. But T-Mac picked up the slack, scoring a season-high 35 points to lead the Rockets to a 100-86 victory, their third straight win. For more photos from the game, click here.

by John

SUNDAY, 12/11/05 – Remember a couple of weeks ago when the Rockets were in the midst of that tough stretch of games where every opponent was very good, they didn’t have T-Mac, and they were losing every game?

Well, things have started equaling out: the Rockets have played two struggling teams in a row (Sacramento and Portland), they have T-Mac back, and Houston now has a 3-game winning streak – their longest of the season.

Watching Portland against Houston on Sunday night, I couldn’t help but be thankful Houston wasn’t playing a better team. The Rockets were letting a very young team that had lost 8 of its last 10 games with a record worse than their own hang around through the first two quarters, holding only a 47-42 lead. You just wondered when T-Mac, who had 16 at halftime, was going to light it up and put the game away.

It took awhile, but it finally happened in the third quarter when the Rockets went on a 9-0 run and T-Mac scored 8 points in the quarter to give them a 68-57 lead heading into the fourth quarter.

In the fourth, Houston expanded the lead to 15 points, 72-57. But then Portland kept hanging around and put a scare into the Rockets by going on an 18-10 run to cut it to 82-75 with 4:26 remaining. But former Trail Blazer Derek Anderson — who actually played a decent game — hit a big three-pointer to make it 85-75 with 4:01 remaining.

After Portland scored to make it 85-77 with 3:28 left in the game, the Rockets were able to milk valuable time off the clock by not letting Portland get the ball for almost 1 ½ minutes by grabbing 3 offensive rebounds in a row — thanks to Dikembe Mutombo, who came in and subbed for a foul-plagued Yao.

On the Rockets fourth attempt to score during that very long possession, they finally succeeded when Stromile Swift grabbed yet another offensive rebound and tipped in a missed shot to make it 87-77 with 2:04 remaining. That was about it. The rest of the game was practically a free throw shooting contest, and the Rockets won 100-86.

There is a lot of credit to go around for this victory. Of course, T-Mac was phenomenal by scoring 11 in the fourth, and a season-high 35 points overall on an ‘off-night’ where he shot 14-of-31 from the field and made only 1-of-5 three-pointers. He scored on all kinds of plays: fadeaway jumpers, buzzer beaters, and taking it to the hole against bigger guys. He also started fast breaks with 3 steals, had 4 assists and grabbed 7 rebounds. He made such a difference in this game, I just can’t say enough about him.

I have always wondered what it was like to be a Chicago Bulls fan during the 1990s and be able to witness every game of one of the greatest basketball players ever to play game. T-Mac may not be the greatest ever, but there are some nights where you’re thinking this is what it must have been like watching Jordan.

A couple of the Rockets’ role players who I have been down on this season continue to come around as evidenced in this game. In his return to Portland for the first time since joining the Rockets, Derek Anderson had one of his best all-around games, scoring 9 points on 3-of-5 shooting, including a buzzer-beater at the end of the first half. He also grabbed 7 boards (two of them after missed free throws), dished out 5 assists, and had no turnovers!

David Wesley scored 11 (3-of-7 from the floor), dished six assists, and had only one turnover! Stromile continues to improve and is getting rewarded with playing time in the fourth quarter. Stro’ scored 11 (4-of-8 from the field), grabbed five boards, had two steals, and committed zero turnovers.

Collectively, the Rockets had an amazingly small number of turnovers: only seven (with Yao having three of those). Combine that with 45% shooting, holding their opponent to 38% shooting and blocking six of their shots…and you’re going to win most of the time.

It’s amazing how bad the officiating was in this game. Yao was robbed on several calls and fouled out of the game in the fourth quarter with only 9 points on 4-of-10 shooting. But Dikembe filled in admirably in the second half while Yao was on the bench in foul trouble. Deke scored all 7 of his points in the third quarter and grabbed those huge rebounds in the fourth quarter (9 boards overall) to stave off the Blazers.

So now the Rockets have gone from 4-12 to 7-12 and you can see they are starting to get their confidence back. However, a big test comes Wednesday night at Golden State where they face an extremely dangerous team that can easily be a loss if they don’t play better than they did tonight. The key to getting a win in Oakland will require the same kind of effort we saw Sunday night, but with T-Mac being even more incredible — if that’s possible.

John
john@YaoMingFanClub.com

To see the boxscore from the game, click here.

To read the Houston Chronicle’s article about the game, click here.

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 11th, 2005 at 11:59 pm and is filed under vs. Portland. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.