Houston Rockets start fast, hold off late surging Utah Jazz
Channel: Hot News 24/7
Date: 30/04/2018

HOUSTON — The league-leading muscle memory that was missing for much of the first two weeks of these playoffs for the Houston Rockets made an appearance just in time for the start of the Western Conference semifinals.

The sweet-shooting team that rolled through the NBA regular season to the tune of a franchise-best 65 wins, finally showed up … for a half, at least.

The lock-down defense on the perimeter and back end, the showtime gamesmanship of both James Harden and Chris Paul, it was all there from the start. Now if Mike D’Antoni could just get his crew to keep it up for four straight quarters instead of a half or the three quarters in five games of their first round series that he deemed satisfactory.

Because when it’s all clicking the way it did early in the Rockets’ 110-96 Game 1 lip-busting of the Utah Jazz here Sunday at Toyota Center, there is no confusion as to who and what these Rockets believe themselves to be.

“Scary,” is the way Harden described it afterwards.

Yes, things got sort of interesting late, after the Jazz woke up and started chewing into the Rockets’ 27-point cushion. D’Antoni said he started sweating when the lead dwindled to 11 in the fourth quarter.

He said he was sweating, with every dazzling move Jazz rookie Donovan Mitchell made to get himself or a teammate a shot. even sent Harden back into the game three minutes earlier than usual.

“It was a total game until halftime,” D’Antoni said, as he’s still trying to get his team to put together a full 48-minute effort. “Obviously we came out ready to roll from the get-go,” D’Antoni said. “Halftime happened, and we didn’t have a lot of the juice we should have had. Obviously, we were ready to roll from the get go. They came off a tough series and we had to take advantage of it. They had some dead legs and we came out and did what we were supposed to do.
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