The Houston Rockets are leaving one house of horrors in Portland for another in California when they fly to take on the Sacramento Kings.<\/p>\n
The Kings have won the last three matchups between these teams in California\u2019s capital, with all three being frustrating for the Rockets. Just a few weeks ago, Houton held a 14-point lead before promptly squandering it. Then in overtime, Tari Eason left his assignment in the corner and the Kings hit the game-winning three pointer after Jabari Smith Jr. only made two of his three free throws on the previous trip down the floor.<\/p>\n
Basically, if Houston allows this game to be close, I\u2019m just not sure they can win. The Kings have several players than can play 1-on-1 and right now, the Rockets are a bad team in close games. Honestly, Houston\u2019s only path to winning right now seems to be when opponents just give up. And when you blow multiple double digit leads with a few weeks, teams are less likely to give up because they know you\u2019re susceptible to the run.<\/p>\n
8pm CT on January 11, 2026<\/p>\n
The Line (as of this post)<\/p>\n
Looking ahead because we can<\/p>\n
Tuesday night at home against the Chicago Bulls<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Houston Rockets are leaving one house of horrors in Portland for another in California when they fly…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":528761,"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-528760","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\/115874912289083136","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528760","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=528760"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528760\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/528761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=528760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=528760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=528760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}