The Houston Rockets have secured game 5 against the Minnesota Timberwolves with 122:104 (BOXSCORE) and have thus entered the second round. An outstanding third quarter was enough for the Texans.
The “Gentleman’s Sweep” is complete! The Rockets are in the second round after their fourth win over Minnesota and are now waiting for the winner of the series between OKC Thunder and Utah Jazz. In game 5, a concentrated half was enough to beat Minnesota convincingly.
In the first half the game was still close, the Wolves even took a tight 59:55 lead into the Locker Room. This had a lot to do with the fact that both James Harden and Chris Paul were pretty pale in the first half. Harden was out of the field at the break at 2/9 (5 points), at CP3 it was even only 2 (1/7 FG). The fact that Houston was only 4 points behind the Rockets was mainly due to the strong Clint Capela, Trevor Ariza (13 each) and Eric Gordon (12).
And then it became pretty clear pretty quickly. Harden now found his rhythm – with 15 points and 3 assists in the third quarter alone, he quickly forgot his weak first half. Jimmy Butler struggled more and more with the Wolves and obviously did not move around, in the last quarter he was no longer used, whereby the Wolves made no official statement about his injury.
It probably wouldn’t have changed much: Houston won the third quarter with 15 points and after that the best team of the Regular Season did not let anything burn any more. The lead grew relatively quickly to 20 points, resulting in a correspondingly clear result.
Harden ended the game with very convincing numbers of 24 points and 12 assists, but the best man of the day was Capela – the Swiss played a very strong double double (26 points, 12/14 FG, 15 rebounds) and was absolutely equal to his equally strong counterpart Karl-Anthony Towns (23 points, 14 rebounds). Capela was also top scorer among six Rockets players in double figures.
Six players also scored double-digit in the Wolves, whose first Postseason participation since 2004 is over. After Towns, Jamal Crawford was the best man with 20 points from the bank.