The Houston Rockets will be on the road Saturday night with an opportunity to complete a season sweep of the Eastern Conference-leading Cleveland Cavaliers.
Saturday’s matchup will be the second of back-to-back games for Houston against Cleveland, following a 109-108 Rockets win in Houston on Wednesday. Fred VanVleet scored 26 points and hit a pair of crucial 3-pointers down the stretch in the victory.
Alperen Sengun and Amen Thompson posted double-doubles for Houston. Sengun put up 18 points and 11 rebounds; Thompson had 16 points and 16 rebounds.
Jalen Green, who averages 21.3 points per game, and 12.8-point-per-game scorer Dillon Brooks tallied just 10 and four points, respectively, in Wednesday’s win. Green was 4-of-16 shooting from the field.
“In the past, we probably wouldn’t have survived a night of some guys being a little bit off [shooting],” Houston coach Ime Udoka said.
“Tari [Eason] being healthy and what Steven [Adams] provides in his own way aids the offense,” Udoka added when evaluating Houston’s balance. Eight Rockets who have played in at least 25 games are averaging in double digits per contest.
Among them is Sengun, who is averaging a double-double per game at 19.2 points and 10.5 rebounds. His work on the boards plays a key part in Houston’s offense, as Udoka noted with regard to fellow big man Adams.
Adams and Sengun average 2.4 and 3.4 offensive rebounds per game, respectively, while Thompson adds 2.8 to give the Rockets the NBA’s best offensive rebounding average with 14.7.
Houston also boasts some of the league’s best defensive numbers, holding opponents to 107.8 points per game. The 108 points to which the Rockets held Cleveland on Wednesday marked the high-scoring Cavaliers’ fourth-lowest output of the season.
Cleveland enters Saturday averaging 121.8 points per game, second in the league, after returning to offensive form on Friday with 128 points against the Philadelphia 76ers.
Despite the prolific scoring performance in the first leg of their weekend back-to-back, however, the Cavaliers gave up 132 points to suffer back-to-back losses for just the second time this season.
Philadelphia’s astounding 21-of-39 performance from 3-point range was at the heart of the win against Cleveland on Friday, an effort that Cavaliers coach Kenny Atkinson attributed in part to defensive breakdowns.
A positive coming out of the loss for Cleveland, which fell into a tie for the NBA’s best record with Oklahoma City at 36-8, was the play of Ty Jerome off the bench. Jerome scored a career-high 33 points and went 8-for-8 on 3-point attempts.
“The guy’s just been unbelievable all year. He’s been one of our best players,” Atkinson said. “It doesn’t surprise me. He just keeps going. He just keeps getting better.”
With his offensive outburst on Friday, Jerome pushed his season scoring average to 11 points per game. He is one six Cavaliers scoring in double figures per game, a group led by Donovan Mitchell (23.5).
Mitchell scored 37 points at Philadelphia, his third game at least 33 points over the past four. The outlier was a 19-point performance on 7-of-21 shooting from the floor at Houston.
–Field Level Media
