Harden seemed to just tune out at some point and instead shifted his focus on the referees. There was that unfortunate encounter with Dwight Howard, but hopefully that will help the rookie.
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It’s now four straight defeats for the Knicks (8-10), although none were as heartbreaking as Sunday evening. They never led again.
-James Harden averaged a near triple-double with 32 points, 10.5 assists and 9.5 rebounds against the Pistons last season.
Without Anthony, who was a late scratch, Arron Afflalo shouldered the offensive load and scored 31 points on 13-of-19 shooting in 42 minutes.
Jerian Grant had his second straight solid performance off the bench, hitting a fadeaway jumper from the wing and a 3-pointer in succession before finding Williams for a corner 3-pointer to stretch the lead to 14 with 8:04 remaining, but less than three minutes later, the deficit was cut to two after a Houston 12-0 run, capped by a Clint Capela putback and the steal of an inbounds pass and layup by Marcus Thornton.
The Knicks announced that Carmelo Anthony, their leading scorer, would sit out because of illness. However, the Rockets are only 6-10 roughly one-fifth of the way through the season.
The game was the second meeting between the two teams in eight days.
“They kept attacking”, NY forward Lance Thomas said. Porzingis has not had many “Welcome to the NBA” moments and when the whole league is telling you how great you are it is only natural to get a little full of yourself. We obviously know his skillset, we know his talents. “He’s gotta be aggressive, and he’s gotta take what’s there, but we can’t count on him to score 50 points every night and win”, Bickerstaff said.
Once the game reached overtime, some of those small things came into play for the Rockets, who shot 58 percent (15-for-26) over the final 13:05. We have to do a better job. The Rockets were able to ratchet up their defensive pressure in the second half, chipping away at the Knicks as the lead they got in overtime was the first one they had since the first quarter. “We figured out another way to get ourselves back in the ballgame”.
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It didn’t happen. Porzingis roamed the paint, scoring on a putback and alley-oop.
