houston-rockets Page 8 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
James Harden Cooks His Spiciest Meatball Yet
At this point in James Harden’s absurd season, a 27-point first quarter is not all that shocking on its own. The dude has already logged 57 or more points five times in 2019, and the Rockets’ offense is weirdly at its most effective when Harden gets to step back across the three-point line to his he...
The Notoriously Rule-Bending Rockets Whined About The Refs In Their Loss To The Lakers
No NBA team has less of a right to complain about refereeing than the Houston Rockets, given how its two biggest stars have bought property in the gray areas of the rulebook. Chris Paul is a notorious flopper and instigator, while James Harden is James Harden, flailing his way to the line a million...
Josh Okogie Locking James Harden In A Closet Makes For A Satisfying Highlight
The Timberwolves beat the Rockets at home on Wednesday night, 121-111, and even though James Harden led all scorers as usual with 42 points on a nauseating 34 field goal attempts, he was far from unstoppable, as proven by T-Wolves rookie Josh Okogie on a pair of dramatic occasions within a couple mi...
Thirsty Rockets Gloat Over Video Of James Harden Committing Grave Robbery
The Houston Rockets resorted to just the saddest damn evidence imaginable Monday night, in an effort to push back against James Harden’s well-earned reputation as an often distracted and indifferent defensive player:...
Nik Stauskas And Wade Baldwin's Wacky Trade Adventure Ends In Indianapolis
When this week began, Nik Stauskas was already playing on his third team in the past two seasons. Like, actually kind of playing: 15.3 minutes per game with the Portland Trail Blazers. Third-year guard Wade Baldwin IV, who was already on his second NBA club, played significantly less. It was not rea...
Jahlil Okafor, Of All People, Leads The Gutted Pelicans To A Road Victory Over The Rockets
The list of guys who couldn’t play Tuesday night for the Pelicans is very nearly a list of every established and half-decent player on the roster. This was a nationally televised game against the surging Rockets, and the lineups foretold an ugly, lopsided massacre:...
Kenneth Faried Hustled The Raptors Into Oblivion
Kenneth Faried entered the league as an undersized, but explosive, power forward whose tenacity on the glass, high-flying dunks and absurd athleticism seemed to make up for the fact that he didn’t have many other discernible skills on the court. As his skills diminished in value and power—coupled wi...
P.J. Tucker Randomly Decides The Ball Has Cooties, Refuses To Touch It
I defy you to make sense of this sequence, from late in Houston’s road win over the lousy Knicks. The Rockets were up three after an Allonzo Trier free throw with 59 seconds on the clock. The Knicks pressed up the court to deny the inbound to James Harden, who went for another 61 points in the game....
Report: Carmelo Anthony Has Been Dug Out Of The Crawl Space And Placed On The Corner
Hey, remember Carmelo Anthony? After a decidedly bad season in Oklahoma City, where he was supposed to help put the Thunder into title contention, he went to Houston with the intention of providing some shooting and keeping the Rockets in title contention. That pipe dream lasted mere weeks before he...
Teams Are Getting More And More Shameless About Defending The Rockets
The fun and frisky Brooklyn Nets deserve enormous credit for their overtime road win in Houston Wednesday night. Even with almost every useful non-Harden Rockets player either on the shelf or suddenly a member of the Rio Grande Valley Vipers, that’s still an impressive outcome, especially on a night...
Damn, Now The Rockets Are Even Losing Their Replacement Dudes
The Rockets are currently missing all of Chris Paul, Clint Capela, and Eric Gordon, three players who together make up roughly 99.9 percent of all the difference-making talent Houston has around James Harden. By rights the Rockets should be dead. That they are not is mostly a testament to Harden’s i...
James Harden Has Reached His Final Form
James Harden is no longer a basketball player. He is a thought experiment turned to life, an answer to the question of what happens when one team gives itself over completely to a hyper-efficient death machine....
The Bucks Just Provided The League With A Blueprint On Stopping James Harden And The Rockets
Like with any of the NBA’s elite players, teams can often extrapolate victories from limiting the damage a player is capable of doing in lieu of expecting to stop them entirely. This was the case in the Milwaukee Bucks’ 116-109 victory against the Rockets on Wednesday night. Not only was the team ab...
Humiliating Faceplant Is Just The Beginning Of Jamal Murray's Sudden Basketball Death
The indignity doesn’t end with Jamal Murray getting dropped like a sack of dirt by a James Harden behind-the-back dribble. Oh no. It gets worse from there:...
James Harden Is The Most Valuable Damn Player
There are perfectly good reasons to root against both the Golden State Warriors and the Houston Rockets. The Warriors have Kevin Durant and Draymond Green and are a juggernaut; the Rockets have James Harden and Chris Paul and play maybe the least interesting brand of basketball of any worth-a-shit N...
Warriors Get Go-Ahead Overtime Bucket After Just An Incredible Blown Call
The Rockets and Warriors were tied at 132 with less than a minute left in overtime Thursday night when Kevin Durant lost control of the ball in the paint and chased it into the corner. Here’s what happened:...
James Harden Is On An Unholy Tear Right Now
The Houston Rockets—who this season have been dead, not dead, and dead again—are decidedly no longer dead. Since getting spit-roasted by Luka Dončić, Houston has gone 10-1, with the lone loss a two-point squeaker in Miami. Chris Paul tweaked his hamstring, again, in that game, yet it hasn’t mattered...
Referee Meltdown In Celtics-Rockets Surprisingly Has Nothing To Do With James Harden's Footwork
The Rockets ran away from the Celtics Thursday night, in a game that was marred in both halves by some especially spotty and sensitive refereeing by the officiating crew. The officials handed out six technical fouls—three against each team—and at least a couple of them appeared to be the result of r...
Oh Wait, Never Mind, The Rockets Are Dead Again
The resurgent Rockets lost by two points in Miami Thursday night, but here’s what you need to know: they were up eight points in the second quarter when Chris Paul suffered another hamstring injury and had to leave the game. After the loss—which, to be fair, came on the second night of a back-to-ba...
The Rockets Might Be Back, Dammit
The Rockets set a new NBA single-game record for made three-pointers Wednesday night, in a 136–118 beatdown of the lousy Wizards. The various unconscious Rockets combined to knock down 26 threes, which is one more than the Cleveland Cavaliers knocked down in an insane 25-of-46 performance against th...