Tonight starts a two-game set between the Houston Rockets and Portland Trail Blazers. Both games will take place at the Moda Center (aka The Rose Garden).<\/p>\n
Houston already had one of these \u201ctwo games in the same arena\u201d thing with the Utah Jazz, and it went about how these usually do: either there\u2019s a split or the home team sweeps (with the first game usually a blowout and the second a tough, close win). Players have too much pride to get between twice in a row by the same team when the difference is just effort. It\u2019s only when the talent difference is vast that a team has a shot at both games.<\/p>\n
The Blazers have Deni Avidja, who might have had a solid case before for the All-Star game, but certainly with the new rules feels like a shoe-in. He\u2019s currently higher in fan voting than either Kevin Durant or Alperen Sengun.<\/p>\n
Portland is on a three-game winning streak, which includes wins over the Utah Jazz, San Antonio Spurs, and New Orleans Pelicans. For reference, Houston is 1-3 against those teams.<\/p>\n
9pm CT on January 7, 2026<\/p>\n
The Line (as of this post)<\/p>\n
Looking ahead because we can<\/p>\n
Friday night at Portland against the Trail Blazers<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tonight starts a two-game set between the Houston Rockets and Portland Trail Blazers. Both games will take place…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":521855,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3794],"tags":[7,292,194,4066,6,211,2697],"class_list":{"0":"post-521854","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston-rockets","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-houston","10":"tag-houston-rockets","11":"tag-houstonrockets","12":"tag-nba","13":"tag-rockets","14":"tag-rockets-game-previews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/115852200372934102","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521854","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=521854"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521854\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/521855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=521854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=521854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=521854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}