For a preseason game, the Rockets showed plenty. There were flashes of all kinds of offensive potential. They picked up the defense that started slowly. They demonstrated a good deal of what they could be when it all is put together.
The season, however, had begun. They needed wins.
The work-in-progress Rockets were often sloppy, sometimes ragged and often pushed to the brink. But with the game on the line, James Harden scored 16 of the Rockets' final 18 points, setting up the other two to hold off the Sacramento Kings, 122-119, for their first win of the season.
“It was just a grind it out, tough, find a way to win game,” said Rockets coach Stephen Silas, who was presented with the game ball for his first win. “Luckily, we had the players who were able to do it.”
Harden led the Rockets with 33 points and eight assists while John Wall, in his Rockets debut, had 22 points with nine assists. Christian Wood added 21 points with 12 rebounds.
The Rockets escaped with the win when Buddy Hield and De’Aaron Fox, who combined for 41 points, missed 3s to force overtime in the final seconds.
The Rockets had built a nine-point lead early in the second half, dramatically picking up their defense. But when they began to break down on the other end, with waves of turnovers and bog down with stagnant offense, the Kings took off.
The Kings ran through a 13-2 fourth-quarter run almost entirely by turning defense into offense. The Rockets had committed four consecutive turnovers in that stretch. The Kings’ seven-point lead was their largest. With six minutes remaining, the Kings led, 104-97. The Rockets had committed 11 turnovers leading to 17 Sacramento points in 18 second-half minutes.
When they finally kept the ball, the Rockets scratched out enough offense mostly by forcing the ball into the paint to keep it tight. With three minutes remaining, Harden nailed a 3-pointer, giving the Rockets a one-point lead. He added a pair of free throws after a P.J. Tucker steal, scoring nine consecutive Rockets points.
When he found Wood alone on a pick-and-run dash to the basket, Wood’s slam put the Rockets up 115-110 with two minutes remaining.
They got just enough stops for Harden’s 3 with 1:01 left to build a six-point lead before he closed out the win at the line.
The Rockets showed some rust through the first half, which might have been expected if not necessarily from Harden after a pair of games in which he continued to lead the NBA in scoring, as he had for the past three seasons.
Harden missed his first six shots. Wall missed some open jumpers. Eric Gordon went 1 of 4 in the first half. None of that was worth much concern. If anything, the Rockets had to feel encouraged by another look at how explosive Wall appeared from the opening tip and how sharp DeMarcus Cousins was as soon as he checked in.
The greater issue was the same as it had been in the losses in Portland and Denver.
The Rockets’ defense did little to slow the Kings through much of the first half with guards frequently beating the Rockets off the dribble and the Rockets big men dropping deep and out of position to help.
It was not until late in the first half that the Rockets began to string stops together. When they did, Harden got going on the other end, scoring nine of his 10 first-half points in the final 2:47 of the half.
When the Rockets brought the defensive energy they showed at the end of the first half into the start of the second half, they briefly opened a bit of a cushion. After a half in which neither team led by more than the Rockets’ 63-59 halftime edge, the Rockets outscored the Kings, 8-3, in the opening three minutes of the half to build a nine-point lead.
More important, they had picked up their defensive intensity. In a 5 ½ minute stretch to end the first half and start the second, the Kings had made 1 of 10 shots with four turnovers in a 16-4 Rockets run.
The Kings would settle down. They would get going by quickly counter punching after Rockets misses or turnovers. But the Rockets were putting up much more of a fight defensively.
They could not make that brief surge of momentum last, however, when they suddenly broke down on the other end. The Rockets missed their final five shots of the half as the Kings rushed through a 9-0 run to within one.
By then, it was clear how far removed the Rockets were from where they need to be, looking more like a team midway through the preseason but showing flashes of what could be. But after the 0-2, shorthanded start to the season, they also need wins while knocking off the rust.
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