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00:00Yeah.
00:00The Houston Rockets last night.
00:02You were in the building, B. Scott.
00:03We talked here on this show yesterday with Clint here as well.
00:06You know, the Rockets, of course, lost Monday night to the Lakers.
00:10Had a chance to face them in the same building at home two nights later last night.
00:14Lost again.
00:15Just what stood out to you right off the jump when you saw that game last night?
00:19Rockets lose.
00:20Big loss for the standings.
00:21Obviously not playing well lately.
00:23What was the first reaction you had after that loss?
00:26Well, so the big thing about the game, and we talked about this yesterday,
00:30when I was in, is that it was the tiebreaker, right?
00:32So it wasn't a playoff game.
00:33Obviously, it's a regular season game, but it was supposed to have a playoff feel,
00:38a playoff vibe to it, playoff energy to it.
00:40And I thought it did for the Lakers, and I didn't feel that way necessarily for the Rockets.
00:46Not to say that they didn't give effort, but there wasn't like an added level of intensity,
00:50and that part was disappointing given that, you know,
00:54the fact that they lost the first game meant that they absolutely had to win this one.
00:58And, you know, with the tiebreaker on the line.
01:01And so I did like some things, like, you know, we talked about would the Rockets have an adjustment
01:08to the adjustment?
01:09Would they have something for what we knew was going to happen,
01:12which was the trap on Kevin Durant?
01:15And they did that early in the game.
01:16The Lakers started doing that early in the first quarter against Kevin Durant.
01:20And it was semi-effective again early in the first quarter.
01:23And then there were some adjustments between Kevin Durant moving early,
01:28like trying to just basically rejecting the double team.
01:30Yeah, his teammates, some guys did step up.
01:33So it stood out to me that they did play better than they did.
01:37I thought they played better Wednesday night than they did on Monday night.
01:41But it still comes back to, like, how well do you shoot the ball?
01:46Like, how well do you shoot the ball?
01:48Can you put the ball in the basket?
01:49And, look, that was the difference, right?
01:52These guys had Luka Doncic and they had LeBron James reach back in the time machine.
01:59They had 70 points between the two of them.
02:01And you didn't really have much offensively, especially late in the fourth quarter,
02:06the fact that – or late in the game and in the fourth quarter,
02:09the fact that Kevin Durant only takes a couple of shots.
02:12You've got, I think, seven guys between the two teams.
02:16Seven guys took more shots than Kevin Durant in the fourth quarter.
02:19I think four guys on his own team and maybe three guys on the other team.
02:24But seven guys took more shots than Kevin Durant in the fourth quarter.
02:27How could that be?
02:28It's Kevin Durant.
02:29Right.
02:29You know, so it stood out to me that on Monday they lost
02:35because they overexposed Kevin Durant as a ball handler.
02:39And Wednesday it felt like they lost because they underutilized him as a primary scorer, right?
02:48And some of that was on him, right?
02:49He's passing the ball to Tari Eason in the fourth quarter with less than six minutes to play.
02:54What are we doing?
02:54And we're getting – we got a couple of Tari Eason jump shots.
02:57He missed.
02:59Spoiler alert.
02:59Yeah, you don't say.
03:00So, like, so that – I mean, and, you know, I was talking about it with some guys in the
03:05media after the game.
03:06They're like, man, I think he thought he was supposed to get the ball back.
03:07Like, well, maybe he was.
03:10But however it goes, like, that just can't be the end result.
03:14So, I thought they were actually better in this game and still not good enough,
03:18which was the disappointing part for me.
03:20Exactly.
03:20That was the most concerning part, that I thought last night's loss was worse than Monday.
03:24Because when you look at Monday's loss, there's some things that you can try to tweak or fix to improve.
03:28But last night I thought they played – I thought they played better.
03:31Sure, I thought they played a lot better, but still they're not good enough to be able to win on
03:34their home floor
03:35against the Lakers after having played them 48 hours before.
03:38And I think as a coach, like, you get more frustrated when you have a performance like Monday
03:45as opposed to a game like last night, and you would almost rather take the Monday performance
03:51because you can fix all of these things.
03:53But when you have that game last night where at the end of the day you're just not good enough,
03:58that's the most concerning part.
04:00The Rockets now, last I checked, 8-13 against the top 10 teams in the NBA.
04:05Like, they just haven't played well enough against the best teams in the league,
04:09the teams that you're going to have to get through if you want to do anything in the postseason.
04:14And then obviously, as you said off the top, I mean, the biggest thing is just for the seeding.
04:17They slide down now with the Nuggets there for the fifth, sixth seeds.
04:20And I think a big thing for the Rockets – look, when you look in the West,
04:24the two best teams at home are the Thunder and the Spurs, the two best teams in the conference.
04:27Then the Rockets have the next best home record.
04:29But they're only .500 on the road.
04:31So if you're not a top-four seed and you have to go on the road in the first round,
04:34I don't know how much Rockets fans are even expecting from this team in the playoffs.
04:38But if you then don't have home-court advantage either in the first round,
04:42obviously it gets a whole lot tougher.
04:43So it was a huge loss last night for the standings, of course.
04:46But I thought it was just, like, deflating in that.
04:49Actually, you know what?
04:49They played a lot better.
04:50They only turned it over, I think, 11 times.
04:52And even at home, still wasn't enough.
04:53The Lakers had the players that made the plays down the stretch, and the Rockets still don't.
04:57We sucked.
04:58It was actually sobering in the sense of I've been trying to decide if the Rockets are the worst of
05:04the good teams,
05:05the worst of the supposed good teams.
05:08And who's in contention for that with them?
05:10We're supposed to be.
05:11It's supposed to be the Lakers, right?
05:13We consider the best teams in the Western Conference to be, in some order, Oklahoma City, San Antonio.
05:20And, of course, Denver is struggling right now, but we've put them – I mean, they're proven.
05:25They've got arguably the best player in the league.
05:27So they're kind of put up there, right, as the top three teams, even though Denver is the sixth seed
05:31right now.
05:32And then those other three teams that are trying to prove themselves are the Rockets, the Timberwolves, and the Lakers,
05:38right?
05:39And based off of how these two games and three nights went, I don't know how you don't give the
05:46nod to the Lakers.
05:47I understand the Rockets beat them, you know, a couple of months back at – you know, I was going
05:54to say at Staples Center,
05:55whatever they call that place now, in L.A.
05:58But the fact is they look like the worst team of the supposed good teams right now, right?
06:05You mentioned their record on the road.
06:08They're not very good on the road.
06:10They're not very good against the good teams.
06:12They're not very good in close games.
06:14If you look that up, their record in close games is abysmal.
06:18They're like something like one in six in overtimes.
06:21So, like, all of these things that would point toward being a good basketball team,
06:26they don't necessarily do those things well.
06:29And it really just kind of just leaves you in a spot where you're kind of wondering what exactly is
06:36the team at this point
06:38and what is the pivot point, right?
06:39Like, I was looking forward to the playoffs for the Rockets.
06:44Now I'm kind of looking forward to the offseason and figuring out what the answers are supposed to be.
06:50And that's a very different place to be in right now.
06:53Yeah, it sure is.
06:54And not what Rockets fans were hoping or expecting this year.
06:56Yeah, I remember sounding those alarms, I mean, even before New Year's, back in the 2025 calendar year,
07:01that this has been the trend for this Rockets team all season, that they've struggled against the better teams.
07:05They have struggled in close games.
07:07They have struggled on the road.
07:08They've struggled in overtime, which are all the scenarios that you have to be good at in order to win
07:13in the postseason.
07:14And yet they were still able to hold water through the first few months of the season
07:19and win enough games against maybe some lesser competition.
07:22And look, obviously, they still have a good record.
07:23However, they're now towards the back half of the playoff field in the Western Conference.
07:27And as we've seen time and time again, just haven't been good enough to beat the teams that are in
07:31front of them
07:32and the teams that they would have to beat in the playoffs.
07:34And I think you mentioned it as well.
07:35And by the way, they showed the stat up there that during this Lakers winning streak,
07:39Luka is averaging 38 points per game, which is wild.
07:42He goes for 40 last night.
07:43And I think you mentioned it, too, a moment ago.
07:45But just that idea of, like, LeBron goes for 30 on the road.
07:48Luka goes for 40 last night, making plays down the stretch.
07:51And for the Rockets, you're still looking at their side and wondering,
07:54who's the guy that's going to be able to make enough plays to win a game like that?
07:57Or, of course, come playoff time, you know, is Durant capable?
08:00Is someone else going to step up to be able to win these tough games down the stretch?
08:03Well, it's tough, too, because it's not like they were terrible.
08:07These guys, every one of their starters scored in double figures.
08:11That's not a common thing, right?
08:13Jabari Smith Jr., 7 of 15.
08:15That's an efficient night.
08:16Kevin Durant himself, 7 of 11 from the field.
08:18Amin Thompson had another really good night where he flirted with a triple-double.
08:22He's got 26-11.
08:25Or, no, he's got 26-11-4.
08:27I'm looking at his defensive rebounding stats.
08:30But he's got 26-11.
08:31So it's not like, you know, Reed Shepard comes off the bench and hits three threes for you,
08:35and he's got 11.
08:36It just wasn't good enough, right?
08:38It's just not quite enough.
08:41And they need more.
08:43Alpern Shingun, who was wildly efficient, right?
08:46Really good in this game, in his first game back.
08:50You know, he's got 27 points for him on 10 of 15 shooting.
08:54And I've been begging for superstar, all-star Alpern Shingun to reemerge.
08:59He kind of does a little bit in this game, because the Lakers don't really have anybody that can guard
09:03him.
09:03But it's not good enough.
09:05One number that stands out to me, really, is the three-point shooting.
09:09Like, if we wanted to simplify it really to the basics, Luke, they don't shoot threes well enough.
09:16And they don't shoot them enough period and volume either, which early in the season was okay because they shot
09:24at a decent enough clip.
09:25Now they don't shoot a lot of them, and the few that they shoot, they don't shoot that at a
09:30well-enough clip.
09:30And so they're just not a good enough shooting team.
09:33I mean, that was the difference between them and the game.
09:3511 of 32 from three for the Rockets, 15 of 32 from three for the Lakers, and there you have
09:42it.
09:42They lose by eight.
09:44Yeah, and the Rockets haven't defended the three-point line well enough throughout the year.
09:47Yeah, yeah.
09:47That's another thing.
09:49Yeah.
09:49So, Rockets lose last night.
09:50And even though it looked better on paper or even on film than Monday, at least for me, maybe other
09:57Rockets fans, maybe most fans, maybe it was the main takeaway.
09:58I thought last night was actually a worse loss because it still wasn't good enough despite the improvements and the
10:03better performance to beat the Lakers.
10:05And then also, of course, just a big loss for the standings as well as the Rockets continue to slide.
10:10Now just percentage points ahead of the Nuggets for the sixth seed in the Western Conference and just two games
10:15out of the play-in round.
10:16You feel like far less of a contender than you did just a week ago.
10:20It's true.
10:21That's the big takeaway.
10:22You feel far less like a contender than you did a week ago.
10:25Yeah.
10:25Tough week.
10:26Lakers come into the building and win both on your floor this week.
10:29That's tough to swallow.
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