The Houston Rockets have been the hottest team in the NBA, but the Boston Celtics reminded us that they've been the best team in the league all season. and demonstrated why the Rockets have remained an underdog even as they climbed over nine teams to the top of the Western Conference.
Twenty-two times since late January, the Rockets found ways to manufacture points and play great defense even against the likes of LeBron James and Kobe Bryant. But Tuesday night in a contentious and at times nasty competition with elbows and hips flying, the Celtics physically overwhelmed Houston. Suddenly, even with only one defeat on their resume in 23 games, the skeptics who believe the Rockets are not championship material have their Exhibit A.
The Celtics, playing without injured all-star guard Ray Allen, put two and sometimes three players on Tracy McGrady, and the absence of Houston's own all-star, Yao Ming, was evident for the first time in 11 games. The Rockets had no way to challenge or even resist the Celtics under the basket and Boston slowly pulled away. Coming as it did after an inspired come-from-behind victory in San Antonio, the story line now has to shift from what the Rockets have done over the last six-plus weeks to Boston trashing two of the West's best teams on back-to-back nights without one of their three best players.
Houston, meantime, will face what has become a typical sequence in the Western Conference; the Rockets left a quiet Toyota Center for the airport, where they'll travel to New Orleans for a date Wednesday night with the Hornets, who sit just one-half game behind the Rockets in the conference standings. The Rockets could play terrific basketball the next three games, at New Orleans, at Golden State and at Phoenix, and still wind up on the wrong side of a new streak. It sounds preposterous to suggest Houston needed to beat Boston on Tuesday, but the Rockets do play 10 of their final 15 games on the road.
Still, the Rockets' run was so long and so stunning it remains the No. 1 story in basketball this season. Simply winning 12 consecutive games with Yao playing was impressive, but winning an additional 10 without him was Herculean. The total of 22 gave the Rockets the second-longest streak in NBA history. Only the 1971-72 Los Angeles Lakers of Wilt Chamberlain and Jerry West won more, and those championship Lakers didn't have to play without their best player, as Houston did.
As Rockets guard Rafer Alston said before Tuesday night's loss, "It's almost magical when you think about it."
There was nothing magical for the Rockets on this night. The Celtics held McGrady to eight points on 4-of-11 shooting, sometimes employing three defenders. "In my 11 years in the NBA I've never seen defense like that," McGrady said. "And they played [Monday night] while we were at home watching them play." Told of McGrady's assessment of the Boston defense, the Celtics' Kevin Garnett said: "That's a helluva statement. [Tell him] thank you."
On the subject of the Rockets and their winning streak, NBA Commissioner David Stern told Richard Justice of the Houston Chronicle, "I am quite amazed, impressed" that people have become connected to a team with so many players the general public simply doesn't know. "Everybody knows," Stern said, "Kobe is going to lead the way and [the Lakers] are a great team and always sold out. The Celtics have these three superstars and there's an excitement in Boston. It's Houston, it's a different kind of phenomenon. It's an everyman phenomenon."
Okay, everybody knows about the 7-foot-6 Yao and perennial all-star McGrady. But the Rockets, at least during their long streak, were dependent at times on the likes of Steve Novak, who came in from the development league to beat Sacramento with a game-winning shot; Mike Harris, who started the season playing in China; Chuck Hayes, who was cut in camp a year ago; and Dikembe Mutombo, the 41-year-old former Georgetown Hoya who has done yeoman's work defensively as Yao's stand-in.
The Rockets brought in three point guards to try to replace Alston, who has beaten back every challenger and was the player who scored 31 points against the Lakers here Sunday to help deliver consecutive victory No. 22.
As Bobby Jackson, who came over from New Orleans in a deadline trade, said Monday: "Different people have to step up and do the important things every night. When Yao went out, it gave us some doubt; I can't lie to you. I played with Yao exactly one game after the trade. I had figured, 'Okay, I know I'm going to a championship contender.' They've got a great center in Yao and a great perimeter player in Tracy who can score and do everything. When they came in here and told us Yao was out for the season, I thought it was a bad joke. It killed the mood in the room, but only for about a day or so. The next day we went out and played like we knew we had to do it together and form a bond."
Strategically, the Rockets maintained much of the defensive ferocity they learned under former coach Jeff Van Gundy while incorporating a share-the-ball, movement-oriented offense installed by current coach Rick Adelman. Celtics Coach Doc Rivers, asked about Adelman and his instinctive feel for what players can do offensively, said, "Rick, offensively, has been terrific everywhere he's been and it's been different styles." Whether it was in Portland, Sacramento or now in Houston, Adelman's teams have been both clever and efficient offensively. Even without Yao the Rockets have found success through sharing.
McGrady knows praise for his all-court brilliance will always be limited until he, at least, successfully leads a team to a postseason series victory, something he's failed to do in all six of his trips to the playoffs.
But McGrady, much to his credit, watched his team go 7-2 in a span without him and vowed to come back a less selfish player, one who would facilitate better than he ever had. He's made good on that promise -- for the regular season anyway. Jackson, having played against McGrady more than with him, has a big-picture view of his new teammate. "The old Tracy," Jackson said, "wanted to just score and he was worried a lot about himself. But since [coming back from injury], Tracy has been making the extra pass, he's gone out of his way to get people involved first. At the end of the game he can still take over when he needs to. But what I see now is a guy who wants to win. He's tired of losing. Sometimes you have to observe as an outsider, take a real look at yourself, and say, 'Okay, here's what I need to do.' I think he's realized in this streak that there's only so much one player can do on his own."
So McGrady has come to learn he's fine depending on rookies Luis Scola and Carl Landry, from Argentina and Purdue, respectively, for defense, rebounding, energy and toughness. He's come to rely on Shane Battier to play the kind of position-perfect defense he laid on Bryant on Sunday. McGrady has come to learn how reliable Alston is, that Mutombo still can block shots with the best of 'em.
"People point out that we beat Dallas when they didn't have Dirk" Nowitzki, Alston said. "But we didn't have Yao. People said, 'Well, New Orleans didn't have David West when you beat them.' And David West is an all-star. But he ain't no Yao. I don't think the Lakers, when they won 33 straight, had to play this many games without Wilt or West, or [Gail] Goodrich."
They didn't.
The question now, with the Celtics and Hornets and tougher opponents on deck, is what will happen after the Rockets lose. "I've been saying all along, we're going to have a bump somewhere along the way," Adelman said. "It's how we respond to it that matters."
With that, the Rockets took the floor to face the Celtics, the team with the best record in the NBA, and the team with the league's best record exposed some of Houston's flaws, like the lack of inside scoring. Still, if somebody had told the Rockets they would be at the top of the Western Conference, having won 22 of 23, they'd take it. So would any of the great players and teams who ever have played professional basketball.
Celtics Coach Doc Rivers said: "In the whole scheme of things, this means nothing. The real work comes later; that's when we both have to prove ourselves."
