Rockets Stumble To 110-105 Loss Vs Suns

It’s hard to find anything positive in the Rockets’ 9th straight road loss.

They started out horribly, scoring a putrid 17 points in the first quarter, while allowing 33. So it looked like the rout might be on its way.

This was not the case. The Rockets’ second quarter featured an alert Rockets team and a 21-point first half from Jalen Green, who shot all three balls well. Unfortunately, despite winning in the second quarter 36-31. the Rockets entered halftime trailing by 11 points.

That kind of start is tough to overcome on the road, but the Rockets would try to overcome it. The first step is to not have a miserable third trimester. Score-wise, they did, scoring just 22 points. Defensively, it was really good, as they only allowed 22 points to the Suns.

That left the Rockets attempting to mount a furious comeback in the fourth quarter. They closed the gap to four points in the 4th, before slamming shots and Phoenix managing to score a few buckets.

Although no one played particularly well for the Rockets after Jalen Green cooled down after his hot first half, Phoenix looked ready to hand the game to the Rockets.

That wasn’t to be, as the Rockets tried to close late behind a tough shot from Fred Van Vleet. Instead, Alperen Sengun fouled two quick and questionable fouls on Jusuf “Shufflin’ Man” Nurkic (no seriously, watch him, he often does a ton of shuffling steps). Nurkic basically dribbled, or rather mixed it up, he doesn’t dribble much, towards Sengun, and threw his arms into Sengun’s body.

During Alpie’s sixth foul, he became angry at the poor decisions. Which led to another episode of “Refs In Their Feelings” which has happened multiple times this season. Brett Nansel was deeply offended that a player disqualified for strange calls could be upset and ejected Sengun for two technical fouls.

Devin “Neymar” Booker made both, and Nurkic made his free throws, and that, oddly enough, was probably the margin of the Suns’ stunning victory. Jalen Green fired a 3-pointer with time expiring, and I’m pretty sure I saw him go through the basket as the end-of-game light came on. Which means it should have counted.

Which means the entire Nurkic Grift and Emo Ref Technicals accounted for the Suns’ margin. It was a poorly played game, but the Rockets, with decent shooting, could have overcome that.

Really, it was kind of a terrible and unpleasant game on many levels.

The Rockets road shootout is evil. Oddly, incredibly bad. Their offense has struggled to do much of anything, and tonight the Rockets barely seemed to get it right. For what? Were they tired of the typical stuck-in-the-mud offense they run? Were they all frustrated?

We’ll never know, but they had all 14 assists, as a team.

They shot 33% overall, 24% from three. It was only in free throw shooting that they excelled with a score of 28-31.

Once again, the Rockets held a good offensive team to below average and NBA scoring average. Once again, their attack is so terrible that it simply doesn’t matter.

The only player with a good offensive night was Jock Landale, who is apparently alive, and center CAN, who went 2-4. Jalen Green shot 41% on 3-point attempts (or 44% if you count a shot that probably should have counted), he shot 27% on 2-pointers.

Good news, the Rockets face the Suns again, in Phoenix, on Saturday. It could get hectic.