Twenty-four hours after getting blown out in Dallas and being brought back to reality on how much farther they have to go, the Rockets got back to eating cupcakes, took care of business, and defeated the Charlotte Bobcats 104-83 Saturday night.

Although you would expect them to win against Charlotte, it didn’t start out looking that way. They quickly found themselves down by 11 points, but then righted the ship and cruised to an easy victory. One of the reasons was because of great defense (more on that later), and balanced scoring across the board, something you don’t see every day.

Six players scored in double-figures. Part of the reason was because Tracy McGrady only played 27 minutes and scored 16 points. That left extra minutes for other players to take on the scoring load.

After showing his age against the Mavericks on Friday, Dikembe Mutombo had a monster game, scoring 14 points and gobbling up 14 rebounds. He also had 4 steals.

Luther Head bounced back after his Dallas debacle, scoring 17 points, hitting 5-of-8 three-pointers, and dishing 6 assists. It’s a Devin Harris-like performance like that the Rockets will need from Luther when they play the Mavericks to have a better shot of winning.

Kirk Snyder also rebounded from a poor game against Dallas, hitting 6-of-7 shots for 15 points. A contribution like that from Snyder, especially with Bonzi Wells hurting, will also be needed if the Rockets are going to have a chance to beat the Mavericks and Suns of the world. Juwan Howard was solid with 16 points and 6 rebounds.

But the star of the game (I can’t believe I’m about to say this) was Rafer Alston, who chipped in 14 points (on only 5-of-13 shooting), but had 9 steals and 8 assists. 9 steals is sick, and is the most by anyone in the league this season. That must be the closest to a triple-double that Rafer has had.

It was those steals (20 as a team, the most by a team in the NBA this season!) and the 27 turnovers Charlotte committed that was the difference in the game. Charlotte didn’t shoot that bad compared to Houston (44.6% vs. 45.2%), outrebounded the Rockets 44-39, had about the same number of assists (25 vs. 23). But it was the defense and steals that made the difference.

The Bobcats’ leading scorer Gerald Wallace was the guy who coughed up the most TOs, giving up 7 of them, and only hitting 1-of-7 shots and scoring 4 points. Everyone else shot decently, except first round draft pick Adam Morrison, who only made 1-of-8, who only scored two, and point guard Brevin Knight, who missed all four of his shots in 16 minutes.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 11th, 2007 at 2:17 pm and is filed under Rockets' off-season. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.