The Houston Rockets dispatched the Portland Trail Blazers on Saturday in a fashion that has become commonplace in their surprising breakout campaign.
The Rockets won for the sixth time in seven games by seizing control in the second half of a 125-103 road victory in advance of back-to-back home games starting Monday against the Detroit Pistons.
Alperen Sengun and Jalen Green, who both signed extensions in the offseason before their fourth seasons in the NBA, again co-authored the triumph. Sengun produced 23 points, 15 rebounds and six assists while Green added 26 points and five rebounds.
Green and Sengun have found a simultaneous rhythm of late for the ascendant Rockets, whose .683 winning percentage at the halfway mark of the schedule is their best since Houston went 65-17 in 2017-18 and advanced to the Western Conference Finals. The Rockets already have more wins (28) this season than they did in the three seasons before last year’s .500 finish.
Despite their success and position as the second seed in the West, the Rockets crave more. Houston remains a top-five defense in the NBA with the play of Green and Sengun stabilizing an offense that has thrived in fits and spurts.
Consistency has been the buzzword for the Rockets throughout the first half, and that hasn’t changed as the second half kicks off.
“Good, but we want more,” Rockets coach Ime Udoka said. “(We) feel there’s another level that we can take it to. Defensively it hasn’t been great lately. I think we’ve had some slippage there. Offensively we’re still finding our way. There’s some things we can improve at.
“We’re doing some of the benchmarks that we tried to do at the start of the season, which are offensive rebounds and transition (points), being at the top of the league in those categories. But (we) can still get a lot better. It’s consistency that’s been the message to our team the whole year.”
The Pistons are in a relatively similar frame of mind. Despite a 125-121 loss to the Phoenix Suns on Saturday, their second defeat in a row, the Pistons remain at .500 after winning seven of eight games before their back-to-back losses.
Detroit last qualified for the postseason in 2018-19, when the Pistons finished 41-41. Over the five subsequent seasons, the Pistons’ high-water mark for wins was 23 in 2021-22. Detroit is currently eighth in the East.
Fourth-year guard Cade Cunningham primarily is responsible for the Pistons’ emergence this season, with averages of 24.3 points, 6.5 rebounds and 9.4 assists per game. He had 20 points, six rebounds and 11 assists — half of the Pistons’ total — in the loss to the Suns, and his per-game assists average is more than double that of closest teammate Jaden Ivey, who is sidelined with a broken leg. Tobias Harris’ 2.5 assists per game currently ranks second among the available Pistons.
Seeking better offensive distribution is a focal point for the Pistons.
“It’s just got to be ball movement,” Pistons coach J.B. Bickerstaff said. “We keep talking about the diversity in our offense and just doing the next, right thing. That’s one of the things that we continue to work on.”
