HOUSTON (AP) \u2014 Rookie Kon Knueppel had 24 points and LaMelo Ball added 20 to help the Charlotte Hornets roll to a 109-99 victory over the Houston Rockets on Thursday night and extend their winning streak to eight games.<\/p>\n
Charlotte\u2019s streak is the franchise\u2019s longest since winning nine in a row in the 1998-99 season.<\/p>\n
The Hornets led by 16 after three quarters and Brandon Miller scored the first five points of the fourth to extend the lead to 96-75 with about 11 minutes to go. A 5-0 run by Charlotte, with a 3-pointer by Sion James, made it 103-81 with about eight minutes remaining and Houston coach Ime Udoka pulled his starters.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a second straight lopsided defeat for the Rockets, who lost 114-93 Wednesday night to a Boston team playing without star Jaylen Brown. <\/p>\n
Kevin Durant led Houston, which entered Thursday in fourth place in the Western Conference, with 31 points and Jabari Smith Jr. added 17. It was a tough night for Alperen Sengun, who was averaging 21.2 points, and scored just seven on 3-of-11 shooting. <\/p>\n
Miles Bridges added 18 points for the Hornets and Miller finished with 11 after sitting out the entire second quarter after getting three fouls in the first. <\/p>\n
Coby White was with the team after a trade from the Chicago Bulls on Wednesday. But he did not play and is expected to sit out until after the All-Star break because of a nagging calf injury.<\/p>\n
A basket by Durant got the Rockets within 7 before James and Ball made consecutive 3-pointers to push the lead to 83-70 with about four minutes left in the third.<\/p>\n
Charlotte was up by 12 late in the third before scoring the last four points of the quarter to take a 91-75 lead into the fourth.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\tUp Next<\/p>\n
Hornets: Visit Atlanta on Saturday night.<\/p>\n
Rockets: Visit Oklahoma City on Saturday.<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
AP NBA: https:\/\/www.apnews.com\/hub\/NBA<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HOUSTON (AP) \u2014 Rookie Kon Knueppel had 24 points and LaMelo Ball added 20 to help the Charlotte…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":586199,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3794],"tags":[56984,2097,7,292,194,4066,6,211],"class_list":{"0":"post-586198","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston-rockets","8":"tag-ap-sports","9":"tag-associated-press","10":"tag-basketball","11":"tag-houston","12":"tag-houston-rockets","13":"tag-houstonrockets","14":"tag-nba","15":"tag-rockets"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116023670346889441","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586198","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=586198"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586198\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/586199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=586198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=586198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=586198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}