Yao throws one down after hustling down the floor for an uncontested dunk in a rare blowout victory Tuesday night, shelling the Clippers in LA 128-97. Yao had 17 points on 8-of-13 shooting, and 12 rebounds to record his fifteenth double-double of the season. To see more photos from the game, click here.

by John

TUESDAY, 2/14/06 – The Rockets have been playing well lately, but no one expected the kind of performance they put on Tuesday night against the 30-19 LA Clippers. Making a statement to the rest of the league that they are not going away this season, the Rockets dominated the Western Conference’s fourth-best team 128-97, and have now won 7 of their last 8 games.

The Rockets had their high scoring first quarter (30) first half (61) and final score (128) all season long. And the boxscore from this game is amazing. They shot 58% overall and 54% from 3-point territory. They made 82% of their free throws. They out-rebounded LA 47-26. They had 32 assists and 11 steals (five by Rafer Alston). They pushed the ball all night, getting 15 fast break points, to look like a much different team than earlier this season.

The game is a virtual highlight reel, including lots of dunks by Yao coming off assists from his teammates. Yao scored 17 points on 8-of-13 shooting and grabbed 12 boards. After shooting only 15% on Sunday against the Knicks, T-Mac was back as his usual self, shooting 10-of-21 for 28 points and doling out 5 dimes. And Alston looked liked John Stockton with his 13 assists and 17 points (on 5-of-7 shooting). When these 3 guys play like that, they are going to win almost every time.

Everyone played well in this game, so there’s no need for me to go through the boxscore; you can take a look at it yourself to see all the player totals. But notable performances came from Stromile Swift, who hustled his way to lots of rebounds and tip-ins, and Keith Bogans, who surprised everyone and scored 18 points in just 25 minutes of action, including 4-of-5 three-pointers! Wow!

It’s too bad the Rockets couldn’t go into the All-Star break off this tremendous high — they may be brought back down to earth when they play the high-powered Suns in Phoenix on Thursday night. But at least for now, the Rockets are creating some fear and drawing more respect from the teams on their schedule. I can envision the announcers during the NBA All-Star game also giving props to Yao and T-Mac for bringing their team back from the dead, which was unimaginable just a few weeks ago.

Now at 22-30, it should be an interesting remainder of the season for Houston. If they can go 20-10 the rest of the way, they might just have a shot to grab the final playoff spot. And anything can happen in a first round match-up between either the Spurs or Mavericks, long-term rivals they know very well. They face those teams five more times collectively the rest of the regular season, so if they do make the playoffs, they will have really earned it.

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 Tuesday, February 14th, 2006 at 11:59 pm and is filed under vs. LA Clippers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.