Houston -Maybe it was the absence of Yao Ming. Perhaps it was the early start.
Whatever the reason, the Rockets (7-5) were out of sync from start to
finish during a frustrating
96-86 loss to Dallas.
"We
just didn’t play well enough to win this game," said coach Rick
Adelman. "In the first half, we didn’t defend them like we needed to.
In the second half, offensively, it was just the same thing we’ve been
doing all year: We just got real stagnant, we didn’t have good movement
and if we did get good shots we didn’t make them."
Never
was that more evident than during a third quarter which witnessed the
Rockets shoot a cringe-inducing 2-of-17 from the floor. The lowlights
included a dizzying array of missed jumpers, runners and lay-ups as
Houston needed nearly six minutes before finally converting its first
field goal of the quarter. Unfortunately, the drought didn't end there
- the Rockets required another six minutes before netting its next
bucket.
Yet thanks to some solid second half
defense - and plenty of poor play from the Mavs as well - Houston hung
around long enough to make things interesting at the end. Back-to-back
fourth quarter treys courtesy of Aaron Brooks and Von Wafer injected
some life into a dormant Toyota Center crowd and brought the Rockets
within five. Less than a minute later, the fans were given another
boost after a Ron Artest steal got converted into yet another Brooks'
three-pointer, cutting the Dallas lead down to three.
But
just as he'd done all night, noted Rockets-killer Jason Terry came to
the Mavs. rescue one more time. Terry, who scored a game-high 31,
poured in 10 points over the course of the next seven minutes to
effectively keep Houston at bay and allowing Dallas to escape with its
fifth win of the young season.
“[Toyota Center is] a good
shooting arena," said Terry. "I’ve heard others say it wasn’t, but one
man’s trash is another man’s treasure. I like the red back ground, it’s
like a bull's eye to me.”
After the game,
everyone in the Rockets' locker room was left searching for answers to
the issues which have been plaguing the club's offense so far this
season.
"It comes and goes," said Rafer Alston. "We'll have a
couple of good games and then we'll fall back off. I think we need to
think about that and be consistent because we can't have this up and
down all the time. Hopefully, we'll become more solid in the future
because I think that is a big part of a championship team."
As
he's stressed all year, coach Adelman says the solution to his team's
offensive woes starts with better ball-movement and decision-making.
"If
you don’t have Yao, you have to move the ball. I thought there were
time when we had the ball in the hands of someone who could get there
and our thought process was very poor – we’d run right in the way of
the guy. Yeah, a big part of it is not having Yao, but we have to be an
effective team offensively without him, and we certainly weren’t
tonight.
"I think a lot of it is our mental approach: We
don’t see what’s happening, we don’t see who has the ball. We’re just
out of sync."