The Houston Rockets have not lost back-to-back games all season.
Houston will try to maintain the truth of that statement when it visits the Minnesota Timberwolves on Tuesday night in Minneapolis.
The Rockets are coming off a 104-98 loss against the Portland Trail Blazers, which marked only their second loss in the last nine games.
Rockets coach Ime Udoka said his team’s half-court offense stalled too often. Houston has won 12 of 18 games on the season but it has run into recent trouble when opposing defenses switch off on Rockets players.
“We do have some off-ball actions that we’ve got to get better at,” Udoka said. “And reading the defenses instead of (having) guys just floating around.”
The contest is an NBA Cup West Group A encounter. Houston (2-0) leads the group while Minnesota (1-1) is one game back.
The Timberwolves also are focused on improvement as they return home from a bumpy two-game road trip. They lost 110-105 at the Toronto Raptors on Thursday, then fell 107-105 at the Boston Celtics on Sunday.
After 16 games, the Timberwolves sit at .500.
Minnesota coach Chris Finch said he liked the effort he saw from his players against the Celtics even if the result was not what he wanted.
“I thought we’d come out and have a response, no doubt about it,” Finch said. “I know the chemistry and the makeup of our team, and we’re just kind of going through a tough patch. We’ve got to figure it out. But I thought we took a good step forward (against the Celtics).”
Timberwolves guard Donte DiVincenzo agreed.
“There’s no such thing as moral victories, but … we’re staying together right now,” DiVincenzo said. “We like how we fought. We don’t like how we dug ourselves a hole. But we like our fight, like our togetherness, and we had a chance to win it at the end of the game.”
Anthony Edwards leads the Timberwolves with 27.9 points per game on 47.2 percent shooting from the field, including 43.8 percent shooting from 3-point range. Julius Randle (21.8 points per game) and Naz Reid (13.8) round out the top three scorers.
Houston is led by Jalen Green, who is averaging 18.7 points despite shooting 38.2 percent overall and 30.7 percent from beyond the arc. Alperen Sengun is next with 18.3 points to go along with a team-high 10.6 rebounds per game, and veteran Fred VanVleet ranks third with 14.5 points per game.
The NBA fined VanVleet $50,000 on Monday for confronting officials during Saturday’s loss to the Trail Blazers. He was ejected from the game for the tirade.
One specific area Udoka wants to see the Rockets improve on Tuesday is defending the 3-point line. He said part of the reason Houston lost its last game was because Rockets players were not aggressive enough out near the arc.
“We showed it at half that they had way too many comfortable walk-up threes or workout shots,” Udoka said. “We were too low (with our) pickup points. … We wanted to increase our pickup points and get into them a little bit better.”
