HOUSTON (AP) \u2014 Kevin Durant had 23 points and Alperen Sengun added 20 to lead the Houston Rockets to a 110-100 win over the Denver Nuggets on Monday night that snapped a two-game skid.<\/p>\n
Denver’s Jamal Murray made two free throws to cut the lead to six points with about five minutes left. But Christian Braun missed a pair of free throws after that and Houston got baskets from Sengun and Amen Thompson to push the lead to 100-90 with four minutes remaining.<\/p>\n
The Rockets got back on track after losing to Minnesota and Phoenix following a 7-1 start to the season.<\/p>\n
Murray had 38 points in his fourth game this season with at least 34 points as Denver\u2019s two-game winning streak ended. Nikola Jokic added 25 points and had 16 rebounds and eight assists.<\/p>\n
Four quick points by Murray, with the help of a turnover by Sengun, got the Nuggets within four points with less than seven minutes to go.<\/p>\n
But a short basket by Sengun followed by a 3-pointer from Fred VanVleet extended Houston\u2019s lead to 96-87 with 5 1\/2 minutes remaining.<\/p>\n
The Rockets had a 16-point lead early in the third quarter before the Nuggets used an 18-2 run to tie it at 60-60 with about five minutes left in the quarter.<\/p>\n
Jokic, Murray and Cameron Johnson all made 3-pointers to power that run while the Rockets missed nine consecutive shots and had two turnovers. Their only points in that stretch came on a pair of free throws by Durant.<\/p>\n
Houston got its first field goal in more than 6 1\/2 minutes on a basket by Tari Eason with about four minutes left in the third. That was the start of an 11-2 run that made it 71-62.<\/p>\n
Denver visits the Grizzlies on Wednesday night.<\/p>\n
The Rockets host Golden State Wednesday night.<\/p>\n
See AP\u2019s full NBA coverage here<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HOUSTON (AP) \u2014 Kevin Durant had 23 points and Alperen Sengun added 20 to lead the Houston Rockets…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":880551,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3794],"tags":[1307,883,7,2726,561,866,292,194,4066,762,938,6,253,29499,29496,29494,62644,29498,62342,62649,211,102716,873,90859],"class_list":["post-880550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston-rockets","tag-alperen-sengun","tag-amen-thompson","tag-basketball","tag-cameron-johnson","tag-christian-braun","tag-fred-vanvleet","tag-houston","tag-houston-rockets","tag-houstonrockets","tag-jamal-murray","tag-kevin-durant","tag-nba","tag-nikola-jokic","tag-package-100024-ap-online","tag-package-100502-member-choice-sports-option","tag-product-30599-ap-sports-news-s-wire-only","tag-product-32547-ap-online-basketball-game-stories","tag-product-32562-ap-online-other-sports-news","tag-product-40777-ap-colorado-sports-only","tag-product-40815-ap-texas-sports-only","tag-rockets","tag-rockets-nuggets-score","tag-tari-eason","tag-tsn-rockets"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/880550","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=880550"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/880550\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/880551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=880550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=880550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=880550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}