NEW YORK – The Rockets took care of the business at hand early. With a two-game losing streak, applying defensive clamps in the first half to shut down the red-hot Kristaps Porzingis and the Knicks was first on the to-do list.
The Rockets had to do that to turn a first-quarter deficit to a romp, with their lead reaching 29 on the way to a 119-97 blowout, their eighth-consecutive win in Madison Square Garden, a run that goes back to when Mike D'Antoni was the Knicks coach.
With the win seeming certain, the Rockets treated the Knicks as sparring partners, there just to take their knockout punches.
The Rockets had been misfiring from deep through most of the season, falling to 29th in 3-point percentage. Once they began pulling away, they fired away as if in pregame shooting drills.
The Rockets went 19 of 52 from the 3-point line, moving to 3-0 when making at least 15 3-pointers after going 37-5 in those games last season. The Rockets put up at least 50 for the second time in their past four games, the 15th time a team has shot 50 3s in a game in NBA history and the 12th time that team was the R
Harden scored a season-high 31 points, his first 30-point game of the season after reaching the number 39 times last season. With nine assists, he is the only player since 1983-84 with nine-straight games scoring 20 points with seven assists to start a season, having down it last season, too.
Ryan Anderson showed the Knicks what they could have had if they had been willing to deal Carmelo Anthony to Houston for him, scoring 21 points, his third game in the past four with at least 20 points after not scoring more than 14 in any of the season's first five.
Porzingis, the NBA's third-leading scorer, never got going, making 7 of 18 shots for his 19 points as the Rockets effectively switched defenders to him to keep him under control.
Even before the shots got falling, the defense had taken over the game.
The Rockets had been stuck in another misfiring start. They did not allow the 30 points teams had averaged in the first quarter of the past four games, but the Knicks came close, scoring 27 and leading by as much as eight.
When Harden hit a 3 at the buzzer, it was his only field goal of the first quarter as the Rockets made just 34.8 percent of their attempts with nearly as many turnovers (5) and assists (6).
When the second quarter began, the second unit defense turned the game around. Even in the Rockets' recent struggles, they have defended well to begin the second and fourth quarters, but without nearly the impact as in Wednesday's run to the lead.
After Knicks forward Tim Hardaway Jr. opened the second quarter with a 3-pointer, the Knicks missed their next nine shots as the Rockets went through a 16-0 run nearly entirely with Harden sitting out.
With Eric Gordon playing as the backup point guard after the early season experiments with Demetrius Jackson and Bobby Brown, the Rockets got good looks from the 3-point line. Anderson scored 13 of his 16 first-half points in the quarter. The Rockets' 36 points in the quarter were their most this season.
When the Rockets outscored the Knicks 10-2 to start the second half, they took their lead to 20, their largest of the season other than in a blowout of the Mavericks.
They happily spent the rest of the third quarter as if trying to shake off their early-season 3-point shooting cobwebs. Harden especially rolled, scoring 19 points in the Rockets' 40-point quarter. But the blowout began when the Rockets bench took over when the Knicks were in front and were shut down, allowing the Rockets to spend the rest of the night taking target practice. ockets.
Source: chron
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