#Houston Rockets at Oklahoma City Thunder
Paycom Center- Oklahoma City, OK
[ESPN](https://www.espn.com/nba/game/_/gameId/401585469/rockets-thunder)
[TV/Radio](https://reddit.com/r/rockets/comments/1b1u0kx/game_thread_houston_rockets_2532_at_oklahoma_city/ksh17z8/)
***
|Time Clock|
|:–:|
|Final|
||Q1|Q2|Q3|Q4|Total|
|:–|–:|–:|–:|–:|–:|
|HOU |29|21|24|21|95|
|OKC |28|32|24|28|112|
###Player Stats
**Houston Rockets**
|Player|MINS|PTS|FGM-A|3PM-A|FTM-A|ORB|DRB|REB|AST|STL|BLK|TO|PF|+/-|
|:–|–:|–:|–:|–:|–:|–:|–:|–:|–:|–:|–:|–:|–:|–:|
|D. Brooks|31:32|7|3-9|1-6|0-0|1|3|4|1|0|0|0|2|-14
|J. Smith Jr.|35:18|18|7-16|1-6|3-4|2|11|13|2|1|1|1|1|-9
|A. Sengun|35:47|23|8-13|0-1|7-12|3|8|11|6|2|2|5|2|-11
|J. Green|27:56|16|6-17|2-6|2-2|1|5|6|3|0|0|3|2|-8
|F. VanVleet|36:10|5|2-11|1-7|0-0|0|1|1|5|1|0|2|5|-17
|A. Thompson|17:22|2|1-5|0-2|0-0|4|4|8|0|0|1|2|1|-5
|C. Whitmore|15:58|9|4-9|1-3|0-0|0|1|1|1|1|0|0|0|-7
|J. Green|16:34|5|2-3|1-2|0-0|0|0|0|3|0|2|1|1|-13
|A. Holiday|15:54|10|4-10|2-5|0-0|1|0|1|0|0|1|0|1|-4
|J. Landale|2:29|0|0-1|0-0|0-0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|1
|J. Tate|2:29|0|0-0|0-0|0-0|0|0|0|1|0|1|0|0|1
|R. Bullock Jr.|2:29|0|0-1|0-1|0-0|0|1|1|0|0|0|1|1|1
**Oklahoma City Thunder**
|Player|MINS|PTS|FGM-A|3PM-A|FTM-A|ORB|DRB|REB|AST|STL|BLK|TO|PF|+/-|
|:–|–:|–:|–:|–:|–:|–:|–:|–:|–:|–:|–:|–:|–:|–:|
|L. Dort|21:33|3|1-9|1-5|0-0|0|3|3|1|0|1|1|2|4
|J. Williams|34:51|24|11-17|2-3|0-0|2|3|5|5|2|2|3|1|5
|C. Holmgren|33:35|18|6-13|1-4|5-5|2|11|13|2|1|3|2|4|10
|J. Giddey|20:12|14|6-11|1-3|1-2|1|6|7|4|0|0|3|1|4
|S. Gilgeous-Alexander|31:51|31|11-21|4-6|5-6|2|6|8|3|1|0|2|2|6
|J. Williams|18:51|5|2-2|1-1|0-0|0|3|3|2|1|1|0|2|14
|I. Joe|16:02|2|1-2|0-0|0-0|1|1|2|1|0|0|2|0|14
|K. Williams|11:37|0|0-2|0-2|0-0|0|5|5|0|0|0|0|0|6
|C. Wallace|14:15|2|1-3|0-2|0-2|0|2|2|1|1|0|0|0|8
|A. Wiggins|15:45|6|2-6|0-1|2-2|2|0|2|0|0|1|0|1|8
|G. Hayward|18:55|5|2-5|0-0|1-1|1|3|4|0|0|0|0|1|7
|K. Johnson|2:29|2|1-2|0-0|0-0|1|0|1|0|1|0|0|0|-1
###Team Stats
|Team|FGM-A|3PM-A|FTM-A|AST|PF|STL|TO|BLK|OREB|DREB|REB|
|:–|:–|:–|:–|:–|:–|:–|:–|:–|:–|:–|:–|
|HOU|37-95|9-39|12-18|22|16|5|15|8|12|34|57|
|OKC|44-93|10-27|14-18|19|14|7|13|8|12|43|60|
***
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27 comments
We played 3 good quarters as an awful road team against one of the best teams in the league. That’s enough for a morale victory for me.
Sengun is clearly playing hurt with a back injury, but he was clearly our best player tonight. His physical limitations are obvious and long-term contender viability fair, but he’s still consistently our best player over the season. We work with what we have (especially since the FO hasn’t done well outside the draft). Feels even worse because he didn’t get much help tonight.
Jabari was good though. 3 didn’t fall, with some rushed/settled shots there, but he played well otherwise. He was even a major offensive option with good play within the arc.
Dillon struggled to slow down SGA. His defensive decline sucks, but at least he mostly stayed within his role on offense even if the 3s didn’t fall. Fred’s shot was not there, and he didn’t really do well outside of that. Jalen had a good short stretch and some flashing passes, but that 1st half was horrific. Failed to step up in the bright lights of national TV. Amen struggled to finish, but had good D + OREB. The overuse of off-ball and 3 spot-ups feels like a gameplan/coaching issue tbh. Cam can score, but the tunnel vision is rough. Last 2 are rookies though, they’re productive enough as is, though they have clear ways to improve.
Edit: Saw we were 7-34 from 3 tonight. Pretty good nutshell of this team.
Edit of edit: 1-17 from 3 in the 2nd half Jesus Christ. Not 2018 again.
Us accepting a returned item 🙁
https://preview.redd.it/gho5a03ch9lc1.jpeg?width=1044&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2aef6a09ec818916b4c4d07a64df94a1cf678d01
Enjoyed certain defensive possessions and Sengun making reads (and how about that dunk)? But overall lost. I’ll always enjoy Sengun vs. Chet
Lol Stone and Udoka really chose fucking Fred VanVleet over James Harden. Yet another blunder in Stone’s cap this rebuild
Even more pathetic is how this fanbase villified Harden this summer. Yall wanted Fred over Harden so I better not see any complaining
Since we are not contenders, wouldn’t it be wise to shut Sengun down till he doesn’t feel pain on his back? He still wraps ice during breaks. He doesn’t perform as good as before and we are clearly not winning. Lets learn from what happened to Tari…
Final play: fuck it let jock cook
Is jalen even real
Hard to win when the guards were like 10/40 at one point, team looked good at times though.
Guys, Sengun would have averaged 25 Pts and 10 assists on this OKC team.
I know Jalen gets shitted on but bro…Vanvleet. He hasn’t done shit either
Tried 39 threes and hit 9 of them, no further explanation needed,
Rockets have no inside/outside balance and that screws aeverything else…
Please rest Alpi for saving future, his back iinjury is obvious.
Team is ass bro. Free agent signings looking mid af, young guys outside of Sengun and Amen looking mid af. Sigh.
Got out sized again, but at least there were some clear adjustments.
Honestly this game didn’t annoy me as much as a few others have recently. Maybe I’m numb to it at this point but it’s just abundantly clear that we’re not close to OKC’s level yet & we don’t have a superstar and they do. Realistically, this outcome isn’t surprising at all.
Rockets 9/39 on 3s and going cold on offense every single game. Udoka: we need to be better on defense
I’m gonna need Stone to go, regardless of what we try to do this offseason.
Well we got laughed at on National tv.
Defensively we looked good but 9/39 out from 3. Impossible to win games like that. Udoka has to explain this. This is a team wide epidemic.
Sengun and Jabari never gave up.
Vets Brooks and FVV absolutely horrible, not showing the example or the effort. Why does FVV keeps trying for layups, against OKC of all teams.
Amen got cooked under the rim by Chet all night. Hope he learned something.
Whats wrong with Cam’s shoes, he fell like 3 times.
2/6 on 3pt shot almost make Jalen look like a hero in this game but lets be honest he played like ass. At this point every possession he waste is on Udoka, or the FO if they are forcing his hand. He consistently take more shots than Sengun despite horrible horrible efficiency. There are two rookies on the bench that 9 out of 10 nights play better than him. Or Holiday, for that matter.
Jalen Green is a deeply unserious starting SG.
Jalen Green trade value is down drastically.Alpi might be traded for a superstar and even if that happens this team is still stucked with average and below average players plus a superstar
2 of 11 and 6 of 17 thats our backcourt…. And its not a one time thing but that’s what they constantly do against good teams. I hate that shot chucking culture by our inefficient guards. They need upgrades for next season and although it wasn’t a bad idea try to get rid of Fred and Dillon. Those 2 are playing like rookies when they are supposed to bring in maturity….
And for gods sake give sengun some rest this season isnt worth risking your potential all star centers health for
I’m honestly happy that we’re mid, quite frankly. It’s what I was expecting before the season started. It’s only up from here
Mr 31 cooks us again
Good to see folks finally breaking through the bad defense narrative and realizing that no amount of defense will make up for our shooting woes, at this team’s current state it’d just make losses less embarrassing.
Re: Issues with shooting: Lots of you are asking why we keep chucking 3s despite our shooting problems. The directive comes from Udoka directly – he said he set a goal for the team to shoot 40 3s every game. Now it’s possible that what he meant was create the high quality looks to shoot 40 3s every game. Maybe he sees a very different performance from the team in practice sessions and wants the team to build more confidence. But at the end of the day the team is chucking because the coach is telling him to. One thing that gives me concern: He said something like ‘shots are eventually gonna fall’ in one of the press conferences, which is simply wrong. Players’ shooting percentages don’t drastically improve by themselves. Most improve by 2 – 3%, very few more than that. Again, I have to assume he’s infinitely more knowledgeable than me on this, so I have to believe he means something else. Don’t underestimate how much superstition even experts can buy into however – sometimes they believe them with even more confidence because their expertise blinds them to their biases. All in all, a coach driven mandate, it’s on him, not really fair to blame players for it.
Sengun had a good game, kept working hard despite a clearly injured and painful back that he was massaging at every break he got. Got a few really good assists wasted. Pretty good on defense. It was basically close to how he’d play if he had a back injury when he was on fire first half of the season. Also starting to slowly bring the middy back. Hope this signals a come back for him.
Jalen was Jalen. Hot for very brief flashes, lots of dumb plays otherwise. It’s basically starting to get really hard to argue for keeping him – the only way out is basically if he has no value and they say he might as well sit on the bench. If Jalen isn’t doing well now, he won’t do better with a longer leash.
Tbh, insignificant game from everyone else? Amen gets a pass because he literally carried us the last few games, and Jabari is getting better fast. FVV and Dillon was absent. I got more distracted than usual this time but it didn’t feel like anyone was egregiously bad, just very mid overall, and our shots didn’t go in, but this wasn’t as frustrating as yesterday’s game I feel.
OKC is just better than us, a lot more confidence and poise, super good at moving the ball and drawing up plays, a lot better coordinated. I rewatched yesterday’s game and realized we were playing catch up from the beginning there too, I think the box score lead was misleading because a bunch of their 3s didn’t go in at the beginning. They are just a better team.
I hate to say this, but I did not watch tonight’s game because I already knew what the result would be.
We have this sort of amorphous blob of talent that does not fit, and no way to get rid of it for any value. Honestly, the only players on this team that would get a haul is Sengun and (maybe) Smith. We won’t be signing any good FAs, and therefore must build through the draft. Fact is, Houston is not an FA destination in any sport and never has been. All of our teams have generally gotten guys through trades or the draft (Malone, Sampson, Dream, Thorpe, Clyde, Barkley, Yao, Francis, McGrady, Paul and Harden).
I hope we can finish with about 32 to 35 wins; but we should not be putting guys health at risk to do it, just to get 1 more ping pong ball.
I begged Stone to add shooters to this team but no… We get an injured backup center instead…
Ok, just listened to the post-game interview, and I’m pretty convinced that both Udoka and Stone are desperately trying to save their own asses at this point no matter the cost and are in a huge bind.
Stone won’t admit JG isn’t working out in this team, because it’d be a huge stain on him and he gets to Udoka and makes him walk back his comments about changing the starting line-up post ASB.
Udoka today in press conference saying shots didn’t go in this game, and our folks shouldn’t be pushed around by Chet this easily. He doesn’t want to admit that his mandate to shoot 3s was ill advised, so he’s making up a narrative as if the shots were falling before – dude, shots aren’t going in in any game. It’s not just this game. This is not a fluke. Shots going in is the fluke with this team.
This is all very concerning. With the way they have handled JG’s situation (saying he’s a fit *on paper*, mixed signals pre and post-ASB break about his future in the team, news leaking all around from other FOs that they’ve offered him in trades) and what they have leaked to Jackson about how they view Sengun (yes, they leaked this to Jackson, you can’t convince me otherwise at this point – he was very insistent on it in his replies and didn’t say it’s just his opinion or anything of the sort), as much as I hate to put my conspiracy hat on, there’s something very very wrong about all this.
Here’s what I predict their plan is: To save their asses, they will throw Al-P and Jalen under the bus, that way you don’t have to field questions about why you are trading your best player, (not like you have any other bargaining chips anyway), and Jalen isn’t doing himself any favors with how he plays and probably isn’t valuable enough to bring a good star by himself. Trade them for a big star, and Stone hopes more wins will make the players forget a disastrous 3-year rebuild attempt. Udoka also looks like a good coach and he probably won’t be in this team long anyway so he doesn’t care about the long term.
We need to demand more accountability from Stone and Udoka right away. What a clown show.
What can be said?
Shaq, as one of NBA History’s most dominant Center sees something that some idiot fanbase still do not see and only put the blame on Alpi most times…
Shaq on Sengun after game
“He reminds me of Pau Gasol when he was young. I really like this kid. I would like to see him on a better team. If he was on a team with more talented guys around him, they would definitely do well.”