HOUSTON -- The Houston Rockets needed something, anything to save their season, which was on the verge of ending.
Kevin McHale tried a desperate measure in Game 4 with the Hack-A-Whomever and moving James Harden off the ball, which backfired on him en route to a loss.
With the season on the line in Game 5, McHale benched the slumping Terrence Jones for the slumping Josh Smith and allowed Harden to take control of the ball more, and the Rockets did the rest, salvaging their season with a 124-103 victory over the Los Angeles Clippers on Tuesday night.
The series continues to be in the Clippers' favor, 3-2.
While all the good things Houston was about this season got lost somehow during the first four games, on Tuesday night the Rockets returned to their up-tempo offense, attacking the glass and keeping the Clippers' frontcourt defenders off-balance.
“Yeah, I was just looking for us to have juice and play downhill and attack them,” McHale said. “We play better when we play inside-out [and] attack downhill. We’re one of the best teams at getting points in the paint and we just weren’t doing it.”
Harden also found his way again. He recorded his first playoff triple-double with 26 points, 11 rebounds and 10 assists even while battling the flu. Harden drove the lane with a force, even returning to his famed EuroStep for the first time during the series. Harden also attacked from the outside, and when he looked to distribute, he made smart decisions.
“We just said we weren’t aggressive enough in the first four games; we were timid,” Harden said. “Obviously they’ve got a couple of really good bigs but during the first four games, DeAndre Jordan really only had six or seven blocks, so he wasn’t really blocking anything. We made a conscious effort just to go in there and be in attack mode.”
The Rockets had 13 fast-break points to the Clippers' three as Trevor Ariza, Corey Brewer and Harden drove the lane.
“We played our tempo and to our pace,” said Brewer, who scored 15 off the bench. “We didn’t want to go home. We’re trying to play it one game at a time. Tonight we came out and got the win we really needed.”
With Jones coming off the bench it allowed him to play a more relaxed game and he produced 12 points. Even Smith, who was shooting 27 percent from the field in the series, seemed to settle down, getting nine points on seven shots, and pulling down seven rebounds in 22 effective minutes.
Dwight Howard kept his composure this time around -- despite a foul 20 seconds into the game -- and was a force at the rim, where he grabbed 15 rebounds. He also scored 20 points.
The Rockets' point guards, Pablo Prigioni and Jason Terry, denied Chris Paul and Austin Rivers an opportunity to bring the ball easily up court, which slowed the Clippers from getting into their own offense.
“I just think our defense was a lot better,” Howard said. “That was the mindset coming in. We gotta get stops early, force them into bad shots, get out and run and play in the open court.”
It seemed as if everything worked for a change on Tuesday night, but things will continue to get harder. The Clippers just need one game to advance and that could happen Thursday night in Los Angeles. In some ways, the Rockets need just one win.
The general feeling around the Rockets is if they get to a Game 7 at home next Sunday, they can win it. Their confidence level is very high right now, based on this one victory.
The Rockets really have no choice but to feel this way because they're looking to become just the ninth team in league history to overcome a 3-1 deficit to win a series. The 1995 Rockets team led by Hakeem Olajuwon did it against Phoenix, which was the year they won the NBA title.
Can this Rockets team do it?
“The tremendous motivating factor for us is we don’t want our season to end and we realize that we can focus in on just one game,” Terry said. “One game only and get the win. Then we will be back here in the friendly confines of the Toyota Center.”
