HOUSTON — Houdini mostly did it with imagination and maybe a hidden lock pick tucked beneath his tongue.
That the Rockets have turned the great escape into a regular part of their hair-on-fire, bombs-away routine is worth noting.
The really good, truly contending teams find a way.
It’s not always the heroic last-second shot at the buzzer that winds up on all the TV highlight shows.
It can be a hard-nosed defensive stop, a tough rebound, a loose ball that’s wrapped up with a dive onto the floor.
Thursday it was Pat Beverley getting the biggest rebound of the night, James Harden making the smart, sensible pass and Nene going hard enough to the rim to draw a foul and then make two free throws with 0.7 showing on the clock for a 118-116 win over the Thunder.
It was one of those special occasion games that pop up on the long regular-season schedule for the sideshow. The two whirling offensive dervishes of James Harden and Russell Westbrook, chasing triple-doubles and bending the normal rules of what is supposed to be possible every night.
The stars delivered. Westbrook with 49 points, eight rebounds and five assists; Harden with 26 points, 12 assists and eight rebounds.
“Obviously there is a lot of excitement around this game,” said Rockets forward Ryan Anderson. “But we wanted to keep our composure and just play the way we’ve been playing.”
When it counts most. Late.
You can call it lucky back in November when Kawhi Leonard misses a driving, one-footer and then LaMarcus Aldridge gags on a wide-open, one-footer follow shot that allows the Rockets to escape San Antonio with a two-point win.
You can call it the help of the basketball gods in December when Al Horford’s two-footer in the lane in the final second misses and lets the Rockets sneak off their Toyota Center court with a one-point win.
But now it’s January, almost at the midway point in the schedule, and this is past the point of being an occasional stroke of good fortune. It’s become a habit. On the road at Golden State or Oklahoma City or Minnesota.
The Rockets are 8-2 on the season in games decided by four points or less, which is just one more reason why they’ve been able to shock most of the basketball world by rolling up the third-best record in the NBA. Each time they pull out another close game, it pushes them ahead to the next one.
“Yeah, for sure,” Harden said. “Building on them shows the character late in games when guys step up. Because there are gonna be close games in the postseason and we have to figure ways to close them out. It isn’t always going to be us making shots and it being perfect. We’ll have to get stops sometimes. If we don’t make shots, we’re going to have to figure things out. Several of these close games we’ve had different situations and we’ve figured it out. We just got to continue to grow.”
Growth comes as the Rockets have played the past 2 1/2 weeks without their starting center Clint Capela, who has a fractured left leg, but get 17 critical minutes and 18 points from Nene. Growth comes as the snarling, growling Beverley returns to the lineup with a painfully sore wrist on his shooting hand after sitting out the last two, because, well, this is Westbrook and they need him.
Growth turns into a calmness and an enduring confidence, which is why the Rockets have come back to win six times already this season when they have trailed in a game by double digits
So what if after taking a 112-106 lead with 4:34 to play, they miss nine of the last 10 shots from the field, fall behind by two and then have to stare down the Thunder with the ball in Westbrook’s hands for a potential game-winner?
They’re living for these moments, thriving in them.
Harden takes Westbrook on a switch and does just enough to contend and the shot bounces off the rim. Beverley goes after the rebound like a hungry wolf on a pork chop.
Then after three timeouts with 3.8 seconds remaining, Harden sees Nene pop open off a pin-down and delivers.
“No matter if it’s fourth quarter with three seconds left or first quarter with 10 minutes to go, I’m gonna make that pass,” he said. “My teammates know that.”
The great escapes are piling up for the Rockets. So are the real possibilities.
Fran Blinebury has covered the NBA since 1977. You can e-mail him here, find his archive here and follow him on Twitter.
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