The Rockets beat the Clippers 102-95 at Houston’s Toyota Center tonight. After dominating most of the second half, the Rockets managed a comfortable win by surviving the Clippers’ late surges to try to cut the deficit tonight.
Following the game, Kevin Durant spoke to the media at the press conference and reflected on how the Rockets managed to hold the Clippers’ offense tonight, after having conceded 20 three-point shots in their last meeting at the Intuit Dome in Los Angeles.
“I just think our physicality ramped up. I mean, not having James Harden out there helps too, as somebody else who can create offense and get everybody else involved. But yeah, we knew this team, Kawhi’s playing great basketball, and he’s willing these guys to up their game.”
James Harden was traded a day before the trade deadline to the Cavaliers. Durant warned his team that they shouldn’t take the Clippers lightly, and they torched them from beyond the arc. They weren’t going to have a repeat of that tonight.
“So we knew we had to be on point with everybody got even guys off the bench that we probably haven’t heard of or sorry, haven’t played throughout this whole year. Bennedict Mathurin’s first game. So we were on alert to all of these guys, and they’ve been playing great ball.”
“And then we put Brook Lopez in at the stretch five, it just opened the floor for them all. So, we had to really be locked in today, and it was 40% from the field, 95 points, 43 points in the second half. That’s our type of basketball,” said Durant while subtly pointing to how the Rockets locked down the Clippers’ offense tonight.
Considering that Darius Garland was not on the floor tonight, one cannot say it was a direct shot at the trade. But it was a simple reminder of who the Clippers traded and the impact of how other teams view them as competitors, despite a solid run over the last two months (19 wins over the last 26 games).
Durant finished the game leading all scorers for the Rockets with 26 points, six rebounds, three assists, and two steals while shooting 8-22 from the floor (36.4 FG%) and 3-7 from beyond the arc (42.8 3P%).
The Rockets have improved to 33-19 following tonight’s win in Houston and are the third seed in the West as of tonight. They are set to face the Clippers tomorrow night (February 11) as well on the second night of a back-to-back set of games before the upcoming All-Star break.
Meanwhile, the Clippers have fallen to 25-28 as the 10th seed in the West. It will be interesting to see if someone other than Kawhi Leonard steps up for them tomorrow or whether they’ll have a similar result tomorrow night.
