The Rockets took care of business Tuesday night, putting a shellacking on the 5-16 Sacramento Kings at Toyota Center. Before getting there, though, the Rockets’ starters were letting the Kings in the first quarter and part of the second slice through their interior defense to get lots of easy shots up close. The game was close until the end of the second quarter when the Rockets’ bench started a huge scoring run that went into the third quarter. When the starters came back, Houston opened up a 22-point lead and cruised to a 118-105 victory.

It was a highlight reel of a game with all kinds of passes from Kyle Lowry (9 assists) to his teammates, with Luis Scola getting many of those passes on his way to 23 points, 14 coming in the 3rd quarter on 6-of-7 shots. Lowry-to-Scola is almost becoming like the new Stockton-to-Malone as far as Rockets’ history goes. Although Hakeem was in the house courtside Tuesday night, I don’t remember any point guard (Kenny Smith, Sam Cassell, etc.) during his Dream’s time as a Rocket feeding him the ball as much as Lowry has done for Scola lately.

Probably the signature moment of the game was when Jordan Hill posterized Samuel Dalembert with a ferocious one-handed dunk that had a Phi Slama Jamma snap of a wrist to it. I had to watch that one several times over on my DVR.

Jordan Hill throws one down over Samuel Dalembert. Click here for more photos from the game.

When the season started, the bench that we all thought was impressive (on paper, at least) was really the difference in this game since the starters were sluggish in the first quarter. But Houston’s bench is far superior to Sacramento’s, so we have to take Tuesday’s dominance with a grain of salt.

Interestingly, Jermaine Taylor didn’t play at all in garbage time. I didn’t expect he would since it’s been reported that Taylor will be traded to the Kings (coincidentally) for a 2011 second round pick (if Sacramento finishes with one of the top 5 records in the league, yeah, you heard me right) to make room for New Jersey’s Terrence Williams, who has been traded to Houston. So you can bet the Rockets weren’t going to do anything to risk Taylor to injury. But wouldn’t that have been wild if they had played him? Can you imagine the reaction that would have come from the Sacramento bench if they had played Taylor?

I’m kind of bummed that Taylor won’t be able to show what all he can do in a Houston uniform. I’ve been high on him all season long, and when he did get some playing time, he showed just how much of a scorer and how athletic he is. I think it’s always a disappointment when the Rockets’ front office drafts a guy, they talk him up to get the fans excited, then we never really get to see them live out their potential before trading them. Now we have to get excited about Morris. Oh well, it was nice knowing you, JT. Just don’t come back and haunt us as the second coming of Michael Jordan.

Now that the Rockets have redeemed themselves somewhat with wins over Cleveland and Sacramento after suffering that embarrassing loss in Milwaukee, Houston will have a chance to either let us down again with a stinker of a game on the road against an explosive Oklahoma City team, or get an unlikely ‘W’ like they did against the Lakers at home a couple of weeks ago.

Which Rockets’ team will show up? Based on recent history, I’m not getting my hopes up.

Yao is back in Houston after returning recently from China.

On Thursday, he and his expecting wife Ye Li attended the Houston Rockets’ annual Tux & Tennies charity benefit at Toyota Center.

Click here for more photos of Yao, Ye Li, and Yao’s Rocket teammates at the charity gala.

On Wednesday, Yao was at Toyota Center again for a game against Sacramento and former Rocket Carl Landry.

Unfortunately, the Rockets lost to the 20-40 Kings. Houston has obviously hit a low point of the season with a mediocre record of 30-30 after losing 7 of their last 10 games. It’s good to see Yao again, providing hope for next season that he’s the missing piece the Rockets will need to become championship contenders again.

Click here for more photos from Wednesday night’s game.

It’s often hard to say whether gimme games like the Rockets 115-98 win over the Sacramento Kings are helpful or hurtful. On one hand, they build needed confidence but on the other, they can build too much confidence. Nevertheless, Houston will get another confidence booster tonight against the Golden State Warriors before finishing out the season with two tough conference games. Home vs. the New Orleans Hornets and the season finale @ Dallas. Winning those two games is more important than the Kings and Warriors.

Kings notes, as usual they started out scoring the bucket, pushing the tempo, but eventually, talent will always present an opportunity to prevail and the Rockets took advantage. Sacramento even made a little run in the 4th but in the end, they’re the Kings. Rockets finished shooting 54% from the field with solid contributions from, well, everyone. Even Brian Cook got in on the action, dropping 5 pts and 1 reb in 1:02 min. Yao Ming had a solid 20 pts, 9 rebs and two nice baseline spin offs past Spencer Hawes for the rare but always appreciated authoritative dunk. And Ron Artest returned to Sac with 26 pts, 4 rebs and 3 asts. It was nice to see him get a little love pre-game.

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The Rockets at home beat 94-82 the worst team in the league, the 11-42 Sacramento Kings, which isn’t always a certainty these days, even against a team that has now lost 14 of its last 15 games. We all pretty much knew a victory was going to happen, especially when we learned before the game that Tracy McGrady would not be playing.

Yao Ming throws one down against Sacramento on the way to 24 points and 18 rebounds in a victory. Click here for more photos from the game.

The worst case scenario would have been for McGrady to pull out of mothballs a decent game, then lots of people feeling good headed into the All-Star break and the February 19th trading deadline looming that the Rockets might be able to make this thing work with him in the lineup. That could make them hesitant to do a trade with everyone hoping that maybe he can finally get it going after the All-Star break, and that trading him would be premature.

Lo and behold, though, that didn’t happen! More drama unfolded Wednesday when a Houston television station broke a story that McGrady may be out for the season after an MRI was done on his left knee.

But then later the Rockets announced that McGrady’s knee is still the same, which means according to previous reports over the past few months, it’s okay for him to play on it and that it would only get better if he used it.

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The Rockets’ loss to Sacramento was absolutely inexcusable Tuesday night. It was a huge, huge loss in the Rockets’ quest to stay in the hunt for home court advantage in the playoffs since New Orleans and San Antonio both won earlier in the night.

The Rockets are now 2 ½ games behind those teams with only 8 games remaining, 1 game behind the Lakers, and ½ game behind Phoenix in 6th place in the West.

If the playoffs started today, the Rockets would play the third-place Lakers and would NOT have home court advantage. That’s how big these recent losses have been, including this one they should have won Tuesday, their first loss to a team with a losing record in 3 ½ months.

The Rockets still managed to blow it against a team that had lost one of their best players and rebounders, Brad Miller, who got ejected midway in the third quarter because of two technical fouls. And the Kings were already playing without another big man, Spencer Hawes.

Their absence in the game helped give the Rockets an incredible 49-28 rebounding advantage, including a 21-4 advantage on the offensive boards. I have never seen a team dominate on the boards like that and still lose a game!

Attribute this disaster to the Rockets missing their first 10 shots in the fourth quarter, and shooting only 20% in that quarter and 40% overall.

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Rafer Alston penetrates into the lane and dishes for an assist against the Sacramento Kings. Alston would finish with 28 points on 9-of-17 shooting, 5 assists, and no turnovers to lead the Rockets to a 108-100 victory over Sacramento.

After watching the Rockets-Kings game on Monday night, I just had to watch the second half and overtime of the Lakers-Kings game on NBA TV because of the playoff implications that game had for the Rockets.

If the Lakers had lost that game like they did on the first night of a back-to-back on Sunday night against the Warriors, then the Rockets would be tied for 1st place in the West with L.A.

Unfortunately, the refs made one of the worst calls I’ve ever seen that basically gave the game to the Lakers (more on that later). That ‘win’ by the Lakers might be the difference of a few spots in the playoff standings for the Rockets down the stretch given how tight the race is in the West.

With other games getting top billing for the night, like Lakers-Warriors and Suns-Pistons, the Houston-Sacramento game was really an afterthought.

It was strange to see one of Houston’s games being so low-profile after every game during the 22-game winning streak seemed to be the top sports story, or their subsequent games after the streak against high-profile teams like the Celtics, Hornets, Warriors and Suns getting plenty of attention, too.

So Houston had to get “up” for a game against a very dangerous team on a Monday night when everyone else interested in the NBA was focusing on other games. It has all the signs of being another let-down game after the streak ended.

But give credit to Houston for taking care of business by beating the Kings 108-100. It wasn’t easy, though.

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Yao Ming, Shane Battier and other Rocket teammates congratulate Steve Novak after he hit a game-winning 3-pointer to save the game for the Rockets. Houston had blown an 18-point 4th quarter lead before Novak’s shot. Yao led all Houston scorers with 25 points and 14 rebounds. Click here for more photos from the game.

The Rockets narrowly escaped disaster Wednesday night and an All-Star break where they would have been torn up inside thinking about one of their most devastating losses of the season. Also…

Thinking about how their recent hot streak might have been a fluke.

How they were chokers when it came to winning close games.

How they weren’t really that good after all, despite winning 7 games in a row coming into the game.

That maybe some trades need to happen before the February 21st trade deadline after all to change the chemistry on the team so that nothing like that happens again.

That’s what they might have been thinking if they had lost Wednesday night. After all, when you’re leading by 18 points against a sub-500 team, you’re expected to close the deal if you’re a good team. Especially after the Rockets had lost in similar fashion to the 76ers at home on January 15th when they had blown a 16-point fourth quarter lead.

But the Rockets miraculously pulled victory out of the jaws of defeat when seldom-used Steve Novak rescued the Rockets “Robert Horry style” by hitting a 3-pointer with 2.5 seconds remaining to give the Rockets an 89-87 lead. It was one of the biggest shots hit by a Rocket at Toyota Center in years.

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In case you didn’t see Yao throw the towel Saturday night in Sacramento that got him ejected from the court, or didn’t see Raymond’s clip in the forum, you can check it out here.

You go, Yao!

Update: the Houston Chronicle has a short article on the complaints the Rockets registered with the NBA league office on the calls that made Yao so angry.

This picture of Yao Ming sums up the frustration he had in Sacramento in a Rockets 107-99 loss. Yao fouled out later in the game, got a technical for showing even more frustration, and was escorted to the locker room because of it. This photo is also an appropriate depiction of the frustration he and his teammates must be having by their terrible defense this season, and the inability for anyone to score consistently other than Yao and McGrady. Didn’t they fix all that during the off-season? Click here for more photos from the game.

On Saturday night in Sac-Town, the Rockets got torched again on defense, just like they did against Golden State two nights before, letting the Kings’ superior athletes get to the rim way too many times on their way to a 107-99 victory.

The Rockets got great point production from Yao (29 points) and Tracy McGrady (40 points), but the gaping holes from the other starters on offense at point guard (Rafer Alston – 5 points, 1-of-4 three-pointers), small forward (Shane Battier – 4 points), and Chuck Hayes (2 points) were too much of a handicap to overcome.

Add little production from Bonzi Wells (8 points), Luther Head (4), Mike James (7), Luis Scola (0), and Steve Francis not being able to play because of a sore back, then you’ve got even more problems.

We can’t really say that Yao and McGrady took poor shots that robbed their teammates of scoring opportunities. The two “superstars” made 22-of-45 shots together, which is about 50%. That ain’t bad. I would have preferred for McGrady to not take so many three-pointers. He made 5-of-10 treys, so he gets a pass from me because shooting 50% from three-point land is pretty damn good.

But it’s the 13-for-37 from all the other guys that was the problem. If they had just made 5 more of those shots, or 10 points, to hit 50%, then you’ve got enough points to win this game.

I had said a couple of weeks ago that I would be okay if the Rockets relied less on McGrady to score points, if he would just distribute the ball to get everyone involved in this newfangled offense Rick Adelman is trying to install. If McGrady does that and they still lose, then fine. I won’t be upset because then the players are either going to get used to this system once-and-for-all, or we’re going to ultimately find out which Rockets are not a fit for this system that can help them go deep into the playoffs.

After seeing what we’ve seen over the last two losses, I think that day is soon coming, and I’m not talking about the former case, but the latter.

Of course, everyone in the world sees one glaring problem being Alston, but every game we see Adelman putting him out there to start. It’s like Adelman is the captain of the Titanic letting Alston continue to take this offense down with him.

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Yao charges into Francisco Garcia Sunday night for one of his five fouls. Those 5 fouls held Yao to just 24 minutes of action and 18 points on 6-of-8 shooting. Luckily, Tracy McGrady scored 40 points as the Rockets beat the Kings 112-106 and pulled within 1/2 game of the Utah Jazz for homecourt advantage in their playoff series. Click here and here for more photos from the game. Click here for photos from Saturday’s practice in Houston before leaving for their West Coast road trip.

Maybe the Rockets should play the rest of their games on the road. After losing 3 in a row at home this past week, the Rockets went into Sacramento against a tough crowd at Arco Arena, and came back from a 8-point second half deficit to win 112-106.

It helped that Yao and T-Mac were back in the lineup together for the first time since their 3-game losing streak started.

The Rockets got off to a great start, with Yao scoring 9 of the Rockets’ first 11 points. One of those scores included T-Mac driving the lane, drawing the defense to him, and dishing to Yao for an easy dunk with Yao getting fouled. We sure missed that kind of play over the past 3 games.

For one moment, though, it looked like the Rockets’ season was going to be over when T-Mac twisted his ankle in the first quarter and went down in pain. On the replay, it looked like he had also hyperextended his knee, a much more serious injury. Thankfully, T-Mac returned to action after the ensuing timeout, and all was fine.

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