Comeback Effort Falls Short in Loss to Rockets

By Sean Kennedy (@PhillyFastBreak)

Houston 118, Philadelphia 104 – Box Score

Wednesday night’s fourth quarter for the Sixers was like all of December 2015 rolled into one tidy package. First, it was late December (the Ish-mas season), with Ish Smith arriving to shake the team out of their unwatchable doldrums. Philadelphia went on a 13-0 run early in the fourth quarter to cut a 16-point Rockets lead down to 3. Ish had 9 of his team-high 21 points, plus an assist, during that spurt alone. A couple young Sixers fans were doing the “We’re not worthy” bow down to Smith in the Wells Fargo Center.

Then, it was a flashback to early December again, when the team disintegrated into nothingness once crunch time rolled around. The Sixers had it down to 2 points with 4 minutes remaining. But then, Houston went on a 9-0 run over the next three minutes, punctuated by a pair of Jason Terry corner threes, who I think will be able to hit that shot until he’s 70 years old.

https://twitter.com/HoustonRockets/status/707758471597432832

That JET stuff is really annoying when your team is on the losing end as a result. But really, the Sixers were their own executioners, playing awful basketball down the stretch with their only point over the final 4 minutes of the game coming on a technical foul.

As for the key matchups throughout the game, the battle of big men was a decisive victory for the Rockets. Dwight Howard had a huge line with 21 points on 9-12 shooting and 18 rebounds (9 offensive). Meanwhile, Nerlens Noel returned from injury and put up 17 points and 9 rebounds. 8 of his rebounds were on the offensive end, which is great. In particular, I’ve noticed he’s honing the Tyson Chandler patented bat-out move. Still, he can’t go 32 minutes and only have one defensive rebound. That’s how Dwight Howard ends up with 9 offensive boards and kills the Sixers.

On the perimeter, former teammates James Harden and Robert Covington battled most of the evening almost to a draw. The bearded one had 29 points, 9 rebounds, and 8 assists, but Covington actually did a solid job for the most part guarding him. Harden shot just 8-26 from the field and 0-8 from three. It was a 13-13 mark from the foul line from Harden, a lot of which came in transition, which kept his night fairly efficient. Aside from the mostly effective defense, RoCo had a nice overall night against his former club with 17 points, 7 rebounds, 4 assists, and 4 steals.

The other storyline of the night was the KJ McDaniels revenge game. The man traded away for Isaiah Canaan and a 2nd-round pick received some rare extended playing time and finished with a season-high 12 points, recording a +15 plus/minus in just 17 minutes off the bench.

https://twitter.com/HoustonRockets/status/707736008486469636

As he’s wont to do, KJ had 2 highlight reel-worthy dunks, one shy of his combined total of 3 dunks on the season entering play Wednesday. Somewhere, McDaniels’ mom was having herself quite a night celebrating.

The Sixers will be back in action against Brooklyn Friday, who have actually been playing competent ball the last couple weeks, but are still the Nets. The Lakers are far out of reach at this point. Get a win, boys, and end this skid of 13 straight losses.