Tipoff was delayed by 22 minutes<\/a>\u00a0after a player bent one of the rims during warmups and it had to be replaced.<\/p>\nThe Rockets trailed by as many as 16 and were down by 10 before opening the fourth quarter with a big run to close the gap.<\/p>\n
The game was tied with about two minutes to play when Sheppard blocked a 3-point attempt by Julian Champagnie. Jabari Smith Jr. put the Rockets on top 106-104 with a fadeaway shot a few seconds later.<\/p>\n
Sengun made a basket with about 30 seconds left to extend the lead to 108-104 before Stephon Castle missed a 3-point attempt. Sheppard added two free throws after that to seal the victory.<\/p>\n
Champagnie made eight 3-pointers and led the Spurs with 27 points on a night Victor Wembanyama was held to 14 points with 10 rebounds. Champagnie\u2019s performance came after he set the franchise record by sinking 11 3-pointers in a win over the Knicks on Dec. 31.<\/p>\n
Houston trailed by five midway through the fourth before Sheppard scored all of the team\u2019s points during an 8-2 run that put the Rockets on top 101-100 with about four minutes to go.<\/p>\n
The Spurs led by 10 entering the fourth before Houston scored the first nine points of the quarter, with a 3 from Sheppard, to cut the lead to 92-91 with about 9 \u00bd minutes to play. Dylan Harper scored San Antonio\u2019s first points of the quarter with about 7 \u00bd minutes to go.<\/p>\n
Up next<\/p>\n
Spurs: Visit Utah on Thursday night.<\/p>\n
Rockets: Visit Philadelphia on Thursday night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HOUSTON (AP) \u2014 Alperen Sengun had 20 points, 13 rebounds and nine assists to help the Houston Rockets…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":557222,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3797],"tags":[1981,1970,2097,7,6,67,969,474,4075,4074,66,534,2098],"class_list":{"0":"post-557221","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-antonio-spurs","8":"tag-app-professional-sports","9":"tag-app-sports","10":"tag-associated-press","11":"tag-basketball","12":"tag-nba","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-san-antonio","15":"tag-san-antonio-spurs","16":"tag-sanantonio","17":"tag-sanantoniospurs","18":"tag-sports","19":"tag-spurs","20":"tag-texas"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557221","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=557221"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557221\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/557222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=557221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=557221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=557221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}