After missing an opportunity Monday to move closer to clinching the Western Conference’s No. 2 seed, the Houston Rockets get another chance Wednesday night when they host the Utah Jazz.
This is a quick turnaround rubber match for these teams who played less than a week ago. The Rockets (49-27) cruised to a 121-110 win over the Jazz (16-60) Thursday in Salt Lake City.
Despite their 104-98 road loss Monday night against the Los Angeles Lakers, the Rockets remain slightly ahead of the Denver Nuggets for the No. 2 seed. Both teams have six games remaining, which includes a home game versus Denver on the final day of the regular season.
Houston had won three in a row and 12 of 13 before the loss to the Lakers. The win was there for the taking, but Los Angeles clutched up in the end.
“We’ve won more than we’ve lost and lost some of those last year. I felt there’s improvement overall,” said Houston coach Ime Udoka, referencing the Rockets’ 26-18 record in games that are within five points in the final five minutes.
“(Monday) night, offensively we weren’t good enough,” he added. “We guarded well enough — without the late free throws we basically hold them to 100 — but some of our best players had an off-night shooting.”
Houston had a solid offensive outing in Thursday’s win over the Jazz. Alperen Sengun led seven Rockets players in double figures with 33 points.
Monday’s game at Charlotte — a 110-106 loss — was yet another sweet-and-sour moment for the Jazz this season.
On one hand, Utah’s loss to the Hornets ensured that the 2024-25 campaign goes down as the worst record in franchise history. The Jazz reached the 60-loss mark for the first time, ending their status as the only NBA organization never to lose at least 60.
The 1974-75 New Orleans Jazz, which went 23-59 in the franchise’s inaugural season despite the presence of Pete Maravich, no longer holds the team record for losses.
On a more positive note, the Jazz saw another franchise record broken on Monday — the rookie assists mark. John Stockton held the record of 415 assists since his debut in 1984-85, but Isaiah Collier surpassed it with his fourth dime Monday night. He now has 419 assists with six games remaining.
Though Collier’s shooting has been suspect — he’s hitting just 25 percent from 3-point range for the year — he has averaged 7.7 assists as a starter. That’s significantly more than last season at Southern California, when he dished out 4.3 assists per game as a Trojans freshman.
“There’s no way the level that he’s at from a decision-making standpoint that he showed up here with nothing,” Jazz coach Will Hardy told KSL.com. “That would be impossible. I would imagine some of it may have been hidden.”
Hardy said the Jazz are eager to tap into that hidden talent to see what players like Collier are capable of at the NBA level. That development effort and gamble is part of the strategy for a season in which Utah purposely put out a product that would lose a lot.
“Not every guy in the league right now that’s an All-Star came into the NBA with this super-high reputation, like, âOh, he’s for sure going to be the best player.’ You don’t know,” Hardy said. “So we need to give them opportunity to do that, and that’s what we’re doing every night.”
