This was without question the worst loss of the season.
I had some fear that the Rockets, having beaten the Jazz soundly Sunday afternoon might go into the second game of the away/also-away-but-in-the-same-town, back-to-back with Utah a bit complacent, and might be at risk of dropping a game they really should win.
To say that’s how the Rockets came out to start tonight’s game is a kindness to the Rockets. The Jazz came out and relentlessly attacked the Rockets. They played with more energy, they got to the loose balls, they out rebounded the Rockets, they made seemingly every two point shot they took. Admittedly many of those were layups. Meanwhile the Rockets struggled to do anything right. Keyonte George of the Jazz, after having one of the worst fairly high usage NBA games possibly ever (19 minutes, 0 points, 0-6, 2 ast, 8 turnovers) had a game more in keeping with his season thus far (28pts, 8-14, 8 ast, and well, a still robust 6 turnovers).
In any case, the Jazz started strong, but the Rockets somehow won the quarter 32 to 31. Giving up 30+ point quarters, though, is not how the Rockets win basketball games. So it would prove tonight. The second quarter they gave up 37 and scored only 25. Still, not terrible, right? They could turn things around in the second half, right?
Well, not initially. The Rockets came out awful in the third quarter, and looked, overall, even more lackluster. At the 4 minute mark of the third quarter the Rockets were down 89-70, and it appeared the favor of a rout was being returned. Not so fast, though. Udoka subbed out Kevin Durant, put in Tate and, of course, Aaron Holiday (who, like a chronic cough, would never go away after than point). Tate, Sengun, Holiday and Capela, but mostly Sengun and Tate, would bring the score to 89-98 in favor of the Jazz in the next four minutes.
The Rockets run continued in the fourth, and Utah coach Will Hardy called no timeouts as it happened. Perhaps his theory was to see if the Jazz could solve things, or perhaps he thought it would be as well to aid the Danny Ainge Forever Tank. We’ll never know.
Over the next five minutes Kevin Durant, Sengun and Jabari brought the game to a very winnable 106-109 with about 7 minutes remaining. The Rockets were also in the bonus. This was about as good as it would get going forward. From that point onwards the Rockets would seemingly get no stops, and Aaron Holiday, and to an extent Kevin Durant would go from helping the Rockets cause, to hurting it, either with terrible shot selection in Durant’s case, or bad defense, and offense, in Holiday’s. Still, he stayed in the game, despite becoming a negative.
Coach Udoka, seemed to be chasing another magical Aaron Holiday night, like his great effort in the game against Cleveland, where he scored 18 points in 19 minutes on fantastic shooting. Tonight was more the opposite. Tonight Holiday played 32 minutes, went 3-10, scored 9 points, and contributed almost nothing but 2 rebounds and 2 assists in what amounted to starters minutes.
I very much believe that Aaron Holiday is a useful player. In small doses. He is by no means a 32 minute player unless he’s scorching hot, or it’s a complete blowout. He should not be the lead guard for more than a few minutes. Pretty much all of the Rockets defensive woes in the 4th quarter were the result of switches to target Holiday. Was there an alternative to Holiday being a traffic cone, and not good on offense in the bargain?
Josh Okogie could have certainly contributed 3-10 shooting, but with better defense and rebounding. Reed Sheppard would have been equally targeted, but might have ended up with a steal, or a block, a made shot or two, or some assists. He is in fact taller than Holiday, too. Jae’Sean Tate was a one man comeback in this game, but he was subbed out for Sengun, and not Holiday. I think Tate would have defended better, rebounded better, and could have easily shot 30% (as he went 2-3, he exceeded that) while providing energy Holiday lacked in the 4th quarter, I believe. He’s a better distributor than Holiday, and considerably larger, while not being less mobile. Holidayfrankly looked gassed for much of the fourth quarter. This isn’t surprising, he came in at 8:06 in the third and never left. Again, I actually like Aaron Holiday, he’s useful, but not for 20 straight minutes of game time.
The Jazz, moreover, essentially didn’t guard Holiday after his initial few minutes in the game, as Will Hardy seemingly sensed that he didn’t really have much to offer, and he wasn’t going to get the ball, either. It left defenders free to help. All this, to be very clear, is by no means the fault of Aaron Holiday, but of Ime Udoka.
The death blow was surrendering 133 points, not bad substitutions, of course. This was not helped by an extraordinary stretch of refereeing late in the game. With game still in the balance, the referees called five fouls on the Rockets between 3:49 and 3:13, none of them fouls on a single shot, but for what appeared to be perfectly ordinary defense. This amounted to one foul every 7 seconds of “play” in that time. All of these calls amazingly came on what amounted to a single Utah possession, with an offensive rebound thrown in. It’s fairly rare to see any basketball team reach the bonus in one possession, but that happened tonight, in 36 seconds. (This might have been a good moment to get ejected for Ime, honestly, no one got subbed out anyway.)
To say most of those calls were soft is to give them undue credit. The next two minutes would feature 8 more foul calls, none of them intentional fouling to stop the clock. Mark Lindsay and crew called 13 fouls in the space of 2:27 of game time at the end of the fourth quarter, in a close game. or one foul every 11 seconds of “action”. It’s hard to know just what to say about this sort of officiating takeover. I believe, though, it’s not what anyone watching would choose to see, and the last four minutes of basketball took approximately forty hours of subjective elapsed suffering experienced.
In the end, the Rockets couldn’t make enough shots, or get stops, and Utah won this one 133-125. Normally 125 points would seemingly indicate an easy Rockets win. Not tonight. The Rockets are obligated by the laws of physics or something to have at least one ridiculous loss to Utah every season. Hopefully there isn’t another.
This was the worst Rockets performance of the season, by some distance.
There’s blame to go around everywhere. Most goes to the Rockets players for coming in flat and allowing Utah to score 31/37/30/35 over four quarters. But some must fall on Udoka and staff for what I consider fairly awful in game decision making late. Udoka is overall a great coach, but I believe he fixates on certain things, to the detriment of an overall effort. He also seems fairly slow to react to anything except defensive mistakes by certain players. Bad, or useless, offense generally seems to get a free pass unless turnovers are involved. I think this blind spot of Ime’s hurt the team’s chances in a real way. Occasionally you just have to score more, and there’s no real strategy to do that, other than give Durant still more difficult looks.
Amen, Sengun, Durant all had good stat lines. So what? The Rockets were generally terrible, and the cherry on top is Durant played 40 minutes tonight, on a back to back.
This might be the sort of humbling loss the Rockets as a whole might learn from. That’s about the best that can be taken away for both the players, and the coaching staff. There’s plenty of failure to go around. This was a literal, and also moral, defeat.
