HOUSTON (AP) \u2014 Kevin Durant scored 25 points and the Houston Rockets won their fifth straight game, beating the Utah Jazz 140-106 on Friday night.<\/p>\n
Durant shot 8 of 12 from the field and added five assists. It was the 45th time this season he\u2019s scored 20 or more points while shooting 50% or better. That\u2019s second among NBA players behind Oklahoma City star Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who has done it 47 times.<\/p>\n
Amen Thompson had 21 points and Alperen Sengun scored 19 for the Rockets (48-29), who clinched a playoff spot Thursday. They are a game behind Denver for fourth place in the Western Conference.<\/p>\n
Cody Williams led the Jazz with 27 points and 11 rebounds, but they shot just 5 of 27 from behind the 3-point line.<\/p>\n
Utah (21-57) has lost eight consecutive games and 12 of 13.<\/p>\n
Houston scored the first five points and never trailed. Tari Eason capped an 11-3 run with less than three minutes left in the first quarter to push the lead to 10, and the Rockets led by 12 after 12 minutes.<\/p>\n
Utah scored the first five points of the second, but the Rockets answered with a 12-2 burst to push their lead to 17. The margin grew to 23 before Houston took a 19-point lead into halftime.<\/p>\n
The Jazz whittled the lead down to 14, but the Rockets used a 19-4 run in the final 3:20 of the period to take a 29-point advantage into the fourth.<\/p>\n
Up next<\/p>\n
Jazz: At the Oklahoma City Thunder on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Rockets: At the Golden State Warriors on Sunday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HOUSTON (AP) \u2014 Kevin Durant scored 25 points and the Houston Rockets won their fifth straight game, beating…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":697545,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3785],"tags":[7,423,6,66,422,427,3972],"class_list":{"0":"post-697544","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-utah-jazz","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-jazz","10":"tag-nba","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-utah","13":"tag-utah-jazz","14":"tag-utahjazz"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116345924754518157","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/697544","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=697544"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/697544\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/697545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=697544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=697544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=697544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}