{"id":587803,"date":"2026-02-07T06:07:14","date_gmt":"2026-02-07T06:07:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/587803\/"},"modified":"2026-02-07T06:07:14","modified_gmt":"2026-02-07T06:07:14","slug":"houston-rockets-vs-oklahoma-city-thunder-game-preview-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/587803\/","title":{"rendered":"Houston Rockets vs. Oklahoma City Thunder game preview"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Once again, the Houston Rockets are at a rest disadvantage against a superior opponent. In addition, the Oklahoma City Thunder sat half their roster for their last game in San Antonio.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">In reality, none of that matters since the Rockets probably couldn\u2019t beat the Oklahoma City Blue right now. Houston\u2019s offense, which was build around Fred VanVleet\u2019s decision-making and Steven Adams\u2019s rebounding prowess, is so abysmal that calling it \u201cnonexistent\u201d would be an insult to things that don\u2019t exist.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Defensively, Houston hasn\u2019t been as terrible at it feels, but teams have figured out two things: Alperen Sengun cannot defend the pick-and-roll and no one on the Rockets is playing with much IQ on that end of the floor. Threes have been wide open and closeouts have been\u2026lazy, to say the least. Ime Udoka can call all of the angry timeouts he wants, but this team can\u2019t change who they are.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Truly, it hasn\u2019t felt this hopeless as a Rockets fan since the Stephen Silas years. And even then, there was light at the end of the tunnel in the form of lottery picks. Right now, there\u2019s not much silver lining.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">I know Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Jalen Williams are out, but how is the line only Thunder by 4.5? This is going to be a bloodbath.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Shai Gilgeous-Alexander: OUT<\/p>\n<p>The Line (as of this post)<\/p>\n<p>Looking ahead because we can<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Tuesday night at home against the Los Angeles Clippers<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Once again, the Houston Rockets are at a rest disadvantage against a superior opponent. In addition, the Oklahoma&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":587804,"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-587803","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":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587803","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=587803"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587803\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/587804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=587803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=587803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=587803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}