Former Rocket Cuttino Mobley playfully greets Yao before their matchup in Los Angeles between the Clippers and the Rockets. Yao played well, scoring 22 points and grabbing 9 rebounds, but the Clippers snapped Houston’s five-game winning streak by winning 89-81. For more photos from the game, click here.

by John

SATURDAY, 12/17/05 – The Clippers have been getting lots of press lately by surprising everyone and taking the lead in the Pacific division standing early this season. Even with a three-game losing streak, it was going to be tough for the Rockets to beat them on Saturday since two of those Clipper losses were against last year’s NBA Finals teams: Detroit and San Antonio. They also have been without scoring guard Corey Maggette (averaging 21.7 point per game) the past 5 games because of a foot injury. Meanwhile, Houston had just played Wednesday and Thursday, with only one day off before Saturday’s early 12:30pm Pacific start time.

The way Houston started out, they showed no sign of being tired playing in their fifth straight road game. They got off to a decent start in the first quarter, hitting 46% of their shots, led by an amazing scoring barrage by T-Mac, who made 5-of-7 shots to score 12 points. Most of them were jump shots or un-guardable fallaway jumpers. Yao was very consistent, hitting 3-of-6 shots on baseline jumpers or little jump hooks in the lane.

The problem was that the Clippers were sizzling hot, shooting 50% to only trail 24-23 after the first quarter. Houston had gone on a cold streak near the end of the first quarter, and it continued at the start of the second quarter as they missed 8 shots in a row.

While Houston’s offense struggled, LA extended the lead to 33-27 as their hot shooting continued. Luckily T-Mac kept the Rockets close almost single-handedly by scoring 9 points in a row and had 25 points at halftime on 10-of-16 shooting. But LA sizzled as their shooting percentage increased by halftime to 53%! Sam Cassell was unstoppable, making 6-of-9 shots to score 14 points. Reserve guard Quinton Ross, filling in for the injured Corey Maggette and averaging only 5.5 points per game, was killing the Rockets by hitting 4-of-5 shots for 8 points.

I was also impressed with second-year player Shaun Livingston, who is only 19 years old. But he’s 6’7” and can really pass. During one 5-minute stretch, he had four beautiful assists. With that kind of height and his ability to handle the ball, he can pass over and around many defenses, a la T-Mac.

It was 49-49 at halftime, and if the Rockets could keep up that kind of scoring pace and score at least 90 points — and play some defense — they might be able to win their sixth game in a row.

Unfortunately, not much went right the rest of the way. The Rockets only scored 14 points in the third quarter. As goes T-Mac’s shot goes the Rockets offense. T-Mac cooled off considerably, hitting only 1-of-5 shots and scoring two points. Yao made 3-of-5 shots to score six, but everyone else shot a combined 5-of-19 (Ryan Bowen was 0-for-3, Juwan Howard 0-for-2). By the end of the third quarter, the Rockets trailed 67-63, but were well within striking distance to pull out another clutch, fourth quarter victory.

This time it didn’t happen. Houston shot a dreadful 8-of-21 from the floor, with T-Mac making only 1-of-7 and scoring two points. It’s obvious he either was tired from all the scoring he did in the first half, or has been scoring so many points on this road trip, maybe it caught up with him.

Meanwhile, former Rocket guards Cassell and Cuttino Mobley haunted their former team, both making a combined 4-of-5 shots in the fourth quarter for 10 points to lead the Clippers to an 89-81 victory.

The Rockets seemed out-of-sync on offense in the second half, which is what you would expect when T-Mac is struggling like he was. And when you look at the final box score, it wasn’t pretty. Ryan Bowen’s non-offensive prowess really hurt. He only made 2-of-11. Juwan Howard was 0-for-3. David Wesley was 2-for-7, and Luther Head was 1-for-4. Combined, those four players shot 20%. On the bright side, Moochie Norris continues to play well in Derek Anderson and Rafer Alston ‘s absence, hitting 4-of-5 for 8 points in 11 minutes of play.

Still, the Rockets are 4-1 on this road trip, and have another chance to win on the Staples Center floor Sunday night when they play the Lakers, who are red hot having won 7 of their last eight games.

Regardless of who wins that game, you know it’s going to be something to see T-Mac – who wants to redeem himself from this Clipper loss – playing against Kobe Bryant, who is averaging 31.6 points per game, second in the league only to Allen Iverson.

John
john@YaoMingFanClub.com

To see the boxscore from the game, click here.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 17th, 2005 at 6:21 pm and is filed under vs. LA Clippers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.