Amen, Ya’ll, Amen.
It was bound to happen sometime. The Rockets got an easy victory on the second night of a back to back. Yes, it was against the Spurs, on a road B2B versus a home one for the Rockets, and after they dropped two games they were winning fairly comfortably at one point, to the Pelicans.
Can the Spurs, sans Monsieur Wembanyama, win? Do they even want to win? Judging by tonight, the answer to at least one of these questions is “No.”.
The Rockets started brightly. Effervescently. Crisply.
No, really, I, and others on The Dreamshake Playback stream were asking questions like
“Who are these guys, and what have they done with the Rockets?”
Or
“What am I seeing? Is it aliens?”
It’s not that the Rockets have been bad this season, aside from one tough stretch, far from it. It’s just that for the first about six or eight minutes of the game, the Rockets looked almost perfect. On offense. Certainly the best they’ve looked on offense without Fred VanVleet.
But that must mean they were terrible on defense, right?
Nope. They played really great defense, the starters especially. The only downside is that Sengun got into early foul trouble, which limited his minutes.
How great, though?
The Spurs starters played 108 combined minutes, and scored 27 points.
The best offense from a Spur was 22 points from Team USA gold medal winner Keldon “Unimove” Johnson. (Uni as in unicycle). But he did finish a shot on the left side of the basket, with his left hand, so that’s proof the chupacabra is real.
Honestly this was an easy game, where the Rockets got a lead up to 27 points, to see it slip down to a mere 12 as garbage time began early in the 3rd quarter. Ime Udoka kept his top 9 players in the game until about 4:30 remaining in the fourth quarter. The deep bench, including Reed Sheppard and Cam Whitmore was a disaster, but sometimes garbage goes that way. That’s why it’s called garbage, rather than “highly relevant and predictive time”.
Two Rockets were quite good tonight.
Honorable mention first to Dillon Brooks, who scored 19 on 7-13 shooting, 5 of 8 from three. He added 4 rebounds, a steal and an assist.
Jeff Green also deserves honorable mention for a couple of slick moves to the basket. 6-13 for 13pts in 20 minutes. A couple of times Jeff reminded various Spurs that he was once the 5th pick in the NBA draft, and a high flyer. Probably about the time one of those Spurs was still in diapers, but Jeff still has some hops.
In the “Really Good” category we have Jalen Green and Amen Thompson.
One was Jalen “Of course his bleeding face isn’t from a foul” Green who scored 21 on 9-17 shooting, 3-8 from three, and zero, nada, zilch, freethrows, as well as 7 rebounds and 4 assists.
More impressive still was a literal star turn from Amen Thompson, who played a mere 30 minutes (somewhere Luol Deng is smiling) but scored 25pts on 12 of 15 shooting, 1-3 from three point range, 9 rebounds, 5 assists and 2 blocks. I can say I’ve literally never seen anyone make a couple of moves I saw Amen make on the Spurs tonight. Amen and the Rockets realized that the Spurs, despite the best efforts of Bismack Biyombo, couldn’t protect the rim. On one he Eurostepped into a dunk, from a stop. On another he jumped from two feet at a stop, from under the rim, to a dunk.
Honestly, Adam Silver might have seen Amen horse collar Giannis, but I hope he saw tonight too. (In slo-mo the flagrant 2 looks like murder, but I believe if Amen actually intended murder, Giannis would be dead.) Amen really could, and maybe should, be The New Face of The NBA. Ant Edwards talks big, and to an extent backs it up. He’s big and athletic, but lots of guys have been big and athletic in the NBA. (He also just drifts , seemingly blasé, a good bit, too) I’ve never, ever, seen anything quite like Amen before. Plus, he looks like a movie star.
Jabari Smith still looks rusty, and is back to some of his earlier bad traits (bringing the ball down off an offensive rebound close to the basket, passing up a decent shot to drive to nowhere). Overall, though, the Rockets defense and rebounding is much better with him around. A mobile 6’10” weakside defender fixes a lot of problems, and his shot, if he’s not rushing (and he shouldn’t) looks better than previously.
In any case. the Rockets had a relaxing win for the first time in a long while. It was right neighborly of San Antonio to help with that.
Next up is, what, not a back to back? Two days off? It’s true. See you all Saturday.