Blowout!

The Houston Rockets (41-13) have won their seventh consecutive game against Denver Nuggets (29-26) and are now only one victory behind the Golden State Warriors at the Western Conference. Houston celebrated a sovereign 130:104 victory against the Colorado franchise (BOXSCORE).

After the terrible nuggets in the first comparison of both teams (95:125) it started badly for Denver again. The Rockets’ defense was very attentive, and the role-players of Houston (P. J. Tucker, Luc Mbah a Moute) their threesomes. The nuggets tried to beat the hosts with the opponent’s means (tempo, distance throws), but on the side of the rockets there was simply more quality in the team.

In the second quarter the guests stabilized a little bit, but were already running behind a double-digit gap. Good things usually developed when Nikola Jokic got the spalding in the post office and the Serbian found the cutter through his creativity. However, Jokic showed weaknesses on his own board, where Clint Capela was always able to win a good position (16 rebounds during the break). James Harden scored the last 5 points before the switch, the rockets again led with 17 points.

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The beard continued where he left off after the change. After only four minutes in the third quarter, the MVP candidate had sunk two more distance throws and increased his team’s lead to 24 points. A few minutes later, Nuggets coach Mike Malone was so pissed off that he put all his starters on the bench. His opponent D’ Antoni, on the other hand, left his Top Guns out, although the game had long since been decided. Only 9 minutes before the end they also had a break, but the lead continued to grow, so that the hosts were in front with 35 points in the meantime.

The top scorer of the rockets was once again Harden, who played 11 assists in addition to his 28 points. Capela set a new career high with 25 rebounds (7 offensively) and scored 23 points. Chris Paul (11,7 Assists) was a bit reserved against this. Among the guests, Backup-Big Trey Lyles recommended himself with 24 points, 7 boards and 4 assists, Nikola Jokic played 14 points, 7 rebounds and 5 dimes. Denver was pleased with the performance of Monte Morris, who got to the Knicks backup minutes on Point Guard after Emmanuel Mudaiy’s trade and made a good impression with 10 points and 6 assists in his second NBA game.

Houston Rockets vs. Denver Nuggets: Click here for the BOXSCORE!

Clint Capela. The Swiss player probably played the best game of his career. If he had difficulties at the beginning to use his layups, he could not be stopped at the beginning of the second quarter at the latest. He dominated his matchup with Jokic and also played strong Help Defense, which earned him 2 blocks by the way. By the way: Mr. Harden also did quite a lot in this game.

Jamal Murray. The nuggets still lack a real point guard, which was obvious against the rockets again. Denver stubbornly played his boots down and adapted only slightly to the opponent. Murray often drew quite headlessly to the basket, although the rockets packed up the zone. This resulted in ball losses and situations that put pressure on his fellow players. Also weak: Gary Harris, who had no chance against Harden and left a lot of free throws (3/11 FG, 0/7 threesome).

Ryan Anderson returned for the rockets after his calf problems, but Mike D’ Antoni did not change his starting five and started again with the defensive Mbah a Moute and Tucker. Another side-effect was that the rockets could switch almost everything without hesitation. Except for Jokic, no nuggets player could create reasonably, especially Will Barton and Murray were completely logged out. Another advantage of the Rockets-changeover: Anderson (3/3 threesome) was able to play with Paul in the second unit and profited from the point-precise point guard.