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Saturday January 3, 2009 3:14 AM

Raptors Humble Rockets 94-73


Houston falls for fourth time in last six games

Jason Friedman
Rockets.com Staff Writer

Toronto - The last time the Houston Rockets embarked upon a 5-game road trip, their journey began with heartbreak when Brandon Roy beat them at the buzzer with a 35-footer in overtime.

The Rockets made sure there would be nothing even remotely resembling that gut-wrenching start this time around. Instead, they opted for the ignominy which results from getting run off the floor in a game which was effectively over by the end of the third quarter.

Yes, it was that kind of night for Houston (21-13), as the Rockets started poorly and finished worse en route to a humbling 94-73 defeat at the hands of the Toronto Raptors (13-20).

“It was ugly,” said a clearly frustrated Rafer Alston. “It was another one of our embarrassing performances. You always tip your hat to the other team. They played their behinds off out there, they played hard and played together. But for us, it’s embarrassing. I think for us they need to start handing out pink slips sometimes, the way we approach our game and go about our business.”

In an omen of things to come, the Rockets got off to a ragged start in the first quarter, as they struggled to find any sense of rhythm on the offensive end. They turned the ball over 5 times, missed all 6 of their three-point attempts and managed a meager 2 points over the final five and a half minutes of the frame. The end result: Houston found itself down 25-14 heading into the second quarter.

“It just wasn’t there, we weren’t in sync,” said Coach Rick Adelman after the game. “Everything was one-on-one, isolation, there was very little movement. I didn’t like the way we played the whole game.

But the Rockets’ second unit, as it’s done all season, sparked the club over the next several minutes. Ron Artest hit Houston’s first trey of the game at the 10:50 mark, then followed that up with another bomb from downtown the next time down the floor, and suddenly the Rockets’ deficit was down to five.

Two minutes later, Houston seemingly received another break when Toronto’s starting point guard, Jose Calderon, left the game for good with a strained right hamstring. Seizing upon that momentum, Artest hit yet another three-pointer mid-way through the frame, bringing his team within 31-30.

But Houston fell into another funk just as the Raptors’ Andrea Bargnani (19 points) was finding his groove. The No. 1 overall pick of the 2006 draft scored 8 straight points for his club toward the tail end of the half, helping Toronto regain its double-digit margin at the break, 48-38.

Yet for all the Rockets’ woes in the first half, few could have anticipated the total meltdown to come the rest of the evening. Houston was outhustled, outworked and outplayed, and the scoreboard reflected as much. Awash in a sea of turnovers (a season-high 22 for the game), missed shots ( Houston finished a season-low 34.1% from the field) and matador defense, the Rockets fell behind by as much as 27, allowing Toronto to dominate both ends of the floor.

“We talked about that after the game,” said Adelman. “In this league, you need to find yourself a way to get out of that. You either come together as a group or you don’t, and we have to decide how we’re going to play. It’s one thing to get beat, another to just get outworked.

“We’re on a long trip here and we have to find a way to get through this. One thing about this group is they’ve done that in the past and we have to find a way to do it now.”

In what’s become an all too familiar scene of late, Rockets players within the somber postgame locker room attempted to explain the reasons behind the club’s lackluster effort. Alston and Yao Ming agreed that the team isn’t on the same page right now and both said each individual in the dressing room needs to look in the mirror to see what he can do to help right the ship.

“We need to turn it around,” said Yao. “You can’t say we need to make more shots or something; I need to point to myself that I need to do better, putting lay-ups in the basket, running back on defense, help and recover – that’s what I need to do right now.

“I think coach has said in the locker room that, in this league, it’s easy to keep good chemistry when everything is going right… Basically, we need to fight together. That starts with me, it starts with Tracy, Rafer, Ron… all our main guys and starting line-up. We’re called the starting line-up because we start the game, and when I’m playing like this and we’re looking for the second unit to get us back in the game, I think [it’s clear] we need to turn it around. Maybe they need to be the starting line-up and send us to the bench. We need to do better than the last couple days.”

And 1’s: The only silver lining for Houston Friday night was the fourth quarter play of Von Wafer. The fourth-year guard out of Florida State scored all 18 of his team-high points total in the final frame.

QUOTES

Rick Adelman

Just disappointed in the way we played. We just didn’t play well. I give them credit, but that’s not an effort that’s going to give us too many wins; especially on the road.

(were injuries a part of Tracy’s play tonight?): I’m not talking about individuals, I’m just talking about our team.

(about the offensive execution): there wasn’t any. I don’t know what you want me to say, because it was just a very poor effort and it was a game that is hard to explain.

(on leaving the starters in during the second half): I wanted to see if we would respond. You start playing harder even if you’re making mistakes, and I wanted to find out what we were going to do. And they obviously took it to us. If you’re going to get out of this, you’re not going to be able to do it by just giving in. You’re going to have to fight your way through.

(Von starting tomorrow?): He came in and played hard, but we’ll talk about that.

Tracy McGrady

It’s something that we’re obviously not getting right now, for whatever reason; offensively, defensively – it’s really not there. We’re not executing, we’re missing assignments. I don’t know. I can’t tell you what it is. It’s all of us.

(was this one of those night where you just didn’t have it?): I got a little frustrated at times. It’s kind of hard to get in a groove when you’re touching the ball once every five minutes. You know, I took four shots in the first half. It’s kind of hard to get in a rhythm. For whatever reason I haven’t really been getting that many shots. It’s frustrating, especially when I know there are some times when I feel that I can go one-on-one, but our spacing isn’t good. Just things like that, man, we’re all out of sync.

(do you feel like you’re in between roles right now, or that your role is not really defined?): I’ve been focusing a lot more on being a facilitator for this team because we’ve got other scorers around me. But for whatever reason, it’s kind of taken my offense away from me, so I’m more of a point-forward out there than being what I used to be, and that’s a scorer.

Rafer Alston

(do you feel like everyone is on the same page?): Not at all. Not one bit. It’s embarrassing. Again, we had this happen the other night in Houston. It’s sad.

You have to look yourself in the mirror before you look at your teammates and say something. You can’t do that before you look yourself in the mirror and say, ‘Am I giving 110%?’ before you look at someone else.

It’s more than one thing. You can start on offense, go to the defensive side of the ball, look at the intensity, desire and determination. When you lose by that many points, you have to factor in a lot of things.

Yao Ming

I think I need to look at myself and see what the problem is. I’m one of the main guys on the team, the teams looks up to me, and when you play a game like we did tonight and the last couple games, that’s a big reason why the game is going like this.

Jay Triano (Head Coach)

On the play tonight of Andrea Bargnani…

It’s funny, we weren’t really thinking about Andrea (Bargnani) being a big scorer tonight. He had a tough task guarding Yao Ming, but I thought he played him physical early. Our goal was to wear him down (Ming) as the game went on. We knew if they put him on Andrea that we were going to keep him as far away from the basket as we could and we were able to do that. I think that is what got him a couple open looks, Yao doesn’t want to leave the paint too often.

On playing defense for 48 minutes…

I was pleased with the way we played defence, we held a team that has 21 wins to 34 per cent shooting. Off night for them maybe, but we were gritty tonight. I think every possession there was real focus. We had a good practice defensively yesterday and I think that translated into the effort on the floor tonight.

On the controlled play of Will Solomon…

Will (Solomon) was fantastic today, he didn’t try to do too much. The one play that he did, he looked over at me and acknowledged that he got a little bit crazy. I think that is his maturation as a backup point, he knows who to get the ball to. He was just in control tonight the whole time.

Was it nice to get the win?

Yes we needed that. Everybody was thinking about the whole new year thing, how to CHRIS BOSH (19 points, five rebounds)

start off fresh and get a change of momentum. I think it was a good win for us and we were overdue for it. I’m really proud of the way we continued to play the same throughout the whole game.

On the way you got the win tonight….

The best thing about it was that we had a good practice yesterday and it kind of bled over to the game. I think that can change our mentality every time we step on the court.

Thoughts on Andrea’s play….

He’s been playing well. He knows he has to do well and I think when he keeps that in mind every time, he’s a good player for us. He’s taken the challenge on defence and offence. We know that we can score but he’s rebounding the basketball. He’s doing a good job.

ANDREA BARGNANI (19 points, six rebounds)

Thoughts on the team’s defence…

We played great. They only scored seventy-three points. It was one of the best performances defensively on the season.

How tough is it to defend Yao Ming?

He’s really big and he’s really tall. It was a good job by the whole team to help me. Sometimes he just was too deep and he scored the ball. It’s tough to box him out every time. Other than that, we did a pretty good job on him and it was a good team effort.

JOSE CALDERON (five points)

What’s the status of your injury?

We will wait until tomorrow. Right now, I don’t have much to say. I’m happy we won and there’s nothing else to say.

Thoughts on the team’s defence….

It was great and that’s what we wanted to do. It was great the whole game. The game plan was pretty good. Andrea (Bargnani) scored some points, gave us the lead and after that we just kept playing.

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