Isaiah Hartenstein played a strong game for the Rio Grande Valley Vipers in his G-League intermezzo and missed a triple double by a narrow margin. Isaac Bonga played solidly for the South Bay Lakers, but could not prevent the defeat at the Westchester Knicks.
The Rockets had sent Hartenstein to the G-League on December 4th because Backup-Center Nene was finally fit again. So it went back to the development league for Hartenstein, but the German clearly saw this as an opportunity.
The center was allowed to play for the Rio Grande Valley Vipers at the Aqua Caliente Clippers for 30 minutes and filled the box score with 22 points, 9 rebounds, 8 assists and 3 blocks. With just over one minute to go, Bruno Caboclo’s second lap pick from 2017 put on Bruno Caboclo’s decisive triumvirate to give Rio Grande a 126-124 lead.
Hartenstein stayed cool from the free-throw line in the final phase (8/12 FT in total) and finally put the lid on the 133:124 victory. Top scorer of the Vipers was Point Guard Brandon Sampson with 31 points (10/19 FG), on the other side Clippers-Center Angel Delgado (24, 19 boards) was the best man with a double double.
Isaac Bonga, on the other hand, had to take another bankruptcy with his South Bay Lakers. In the 89:103 defeat at the Westchester Knicks, the forward got off to a good start with an Alley-Oop pass to Alex Caruso, but then cooled down a bit like the whole team.
In the end, the 19-year-old scored 11 points (3/9 FG, 4/4 FT) as well as 8 rebounds and 2 steals. On the other hand it was worse for Alex Caruso (9, 4/15 FG), who couldn’t find his throwing rhythm. Best Knicks man was Pelicans two-way player Trevon Bluiett, who scored a strong 29 points (10/16 FG) coming from the bench.