James Harden aced his return to Houston with another triple-double and the Brooklyn Nets closed the first half of the NBA season with their 10th win in 11 games, beating the Rockets 132-114 at Toyota Center to improve to 24-13 going into the All-Star break.
“For me, once I get on that court, it’s just trying to win,” said Harden. “I’m not really worried about anything else. That was my feeling. Win the game and do whatever it takes and do what you’ve been doing. Wasn’t trying to show off, wasn’t trying to do anything out of the ordinary that I hadn’t been doing. Tonight I got a little carried away with some loose turnovers, but other than that, just playing my brand of basketball and the way we’ve been playing as a team and trying to get a win.”
The trade making Harden a Net after eight-plus seasons in Houston became official on Jan. 16, and the Nets have won 17 of 24 games since. He’s already been named the Eastern Conference Player of the Week twice, and on Tuesday took home the conference’s Player of the Month award for February, his first full month playing in the conference.
Harden has made greatness look routine — “get used to it,” said Kyrie Irving after Monday’s win over San Antonio — and with 29 points on 10-of-15 shooting, 14 assists, and 10 rebounds against the Rockets, he chalked up his eighth triple-double as a Net. After a month-and-a-half, he’s already second in franchise history in triple-doubles behind Jason Kidd.
“So far, so good. Everything that I signed up for,” said Harden. “Top to bottom, it’s been great. Adversity has hit us as far as not missing any games, so we’ve been playing every other day schedule wise and then we’re affected by injuries, guys in and out of the lineups, crazy, weird things happening, but I think we’ve fought through adversity and we’re in a really good position. Now we know each other a little bit better. Now it’s time to get some rest, take care of your body and be ready to go. Second half is gonna be huge for us in the sense of how fast we can get off to a great start. Everybody goes through the same thing. There’s no excuses, and we’re not here to make any.”
The Nets have thrived even with Kevin Durant missing 12 of the last 13 games and veteran forward Jeff Green out for four of the last five. Brooklyn continues to run one of the league’s elite offenses while finding its footing defensively over the last few weeks and lengthening its lineup with the return of Nic Claxton, the growth of Bruce Brown, and bigger contributions from Landry Shamet and Tyler Johnson.
“I think I look at it that most importantly, we’re building a team,” said Nets head coach Steve Nash. “We’re defining roles and identity at both ends and the team is bonding and there’s a great environment and atmosphere forming. So that’s the review of the first half for me in a nutshell. I think we definitely have to continually fight for improvement, invest in each other and those bonds and defensively play like underdogs because that’s something that’s going to take us a long way if we get ourselves to a greater level of that.”
Irving, who will go into the All-Star break as the league’s ninth-leading scorer with 27.2 average, a career-high rate, had 24 points, six assists, and five rebounds against Houston. Joe Harris made 4-of-5 3-pointers and shot 7-for-9 overall to finish with 19 points. He’s shooting 50.6 percent from 3-point range, second in the league, and 53.0 percent overall.
Brown scored 17 points with eight rebounds and seven assists, and Claxton had 16 points on 7-of-8 shooting with eight rebounds.
DeAndre Jordan had a double-double with 10 points and 10 rebounds, plus three assists, while making 5-of-7 shots. The Nets shot 57.6 percent overall and 48.6 percent from 3-point range and had 33 assists, their fourth game in the last five with at least 30 assists.
With a 30-27 lead going into the second quarter, the Nets made their first seven shots of the period on the way to a 14-point lead. Claxton had 12 points while the Nets were outscoring the Rockets 24-13 over the first six minutes of the quarter, and when Brooklyn finally did miss a shot, Claxton cleaned up with an offensive rebound and a putback for a 54-40 lead.
The Nets put up 37 points while making 13-of-17 shots in the second quarter and took a 67-54 lead into halftime.
Leading 74-59, the Nets ran off eight straight points to stretch their lead to 23 with 7:30 to go in the third quarter. The Rockets cut that lead down to 10, but Brown scored inside, and Irving and Shamet hit 3-pointers to quickly go back up by 98-80 and go into the fourth quarter leading 101-85.
The Rockets sliced that lead to single digits with a 10-0 run that made it 105-97, Nets, with just under eight minutes to go. Then Harden hit a 3-pointer, Claxton put back a rebound, and Harden hit another three for a 113-97 lead with 6:48 remaining.
“I think on one hand you're disappointed that we allowed them to get back to 10 a couple times,” said Nash. “On the other hand, they did a great job of extending the lead immediately. We called a timeout, drew up a play, got a bucket, got a stop. It's hard in this league. You play a team, they've got nothing to lose, they've got eight players, they have the total green light and they're gonna go on little runs where they make shots, and they did that: They made threes tonight. I'm proud of our group's growth over the first half and I think that's one of the things we've shown like overtime the other night in San Antonio. They come back from an eight-point deficit within two minutes and we could have folded. We came out in overtime, bang, bang. We put ourselves back up six or eight right away. So it's a great response from a competitive group, and I'm proud of them for that response.”