On Friday night, Houston will make their NBA Cup Debut in a rematch versus their most recent opponent, the Los Angeles Clippers. The Rockets defeated the Clippers and Houston legend James Harden behind a collective team effort. Six different Rockets scored in double figures, including breakout bench players Tari Eason and Amen Thompson. Can they do it again and launch their NBA with gusto?
Houston’s NBA Cup Ready for Take Off
Unfortunately for the Rockets, it is notoriously difficult to beat the same team twice in a row. Part of that is a natural complacency, which should be slightly lessened in this case. The NBA Cup has had success in eliciting some extra pizazz from what can otherwise be humdrum regular season matchups. Some good news for the Rockets is that it will be another Houston home game, though how good that news is may depend on your attitude toward Houston’s 2024-25 tournament court.
Our official @NBA Cup court 👀#Rockets | #Liftoff pic.twitter.com/cmUZPlD4HH
— Houston Rockets (@HoustonRockets) October 24, 2024
The all-red aesthetic is a little hard on the eyes. Furthermore, not deploying a Windows screen-saver-style space background to showcase the team’s “dunkstronauts” was surely a missed opportunity. If you are dead set on a space theme, you could choose to imagine the court is in homage to the glowing red eye of 2001: A Space Odyssey’s HAL. But most fans will care more about the actual basketball (or the results of their parlays, depending on how you classify fans).
Has Houston Gotten Lucky With Its Group?
The NBA Cup begins with a group stage before progressing to single-game elimination. All the games are integrated into the normal 82-game schedule, excluding the finale. The other members of the Rockets’ and Clippers’ group this season, are the Sacramento Kings, Portland Trailblazers, and Minnesota Timberwolves. A cynical mind might have called this group an attempt to juice the ratings with an Anthony Edwards run.
But Minnesota has had a bumpy start to the season as they try to incorporate Julius Randle. They’re also navigating what may be an age-related decline for 37-year-old Mike Conley. The Rockets and the Kings have played the best basketball in the group so far. Even as Jalen Green‘s hot start to the season has begun to cool off, and Alperen Sengun‘s cold start has proven difficult to shake off, Houston has a real chance to make the elimination rounds behind their terrific team defense.
Houston’s First NBA Cup Opponent
The Clippers are doing about as well as can be expected with their highest-paid player yet to play a game. That, of course, is thanks to Harden’s continued excellence as a floor general. The beard may not be the same one-man offense he was with the Rockets, but his game brings the best out of the Clippers’ various role players.
Norman Powell and Ivica Zubac are the best of the bunch. Powell is a microwave scorer who can cook up the occasional monster game out of nothing. As a screen-setting, paint-seeking, rim-clobbering rebounder, Zubac is like a Croatian lab creation of Harden’s ideal screen-and-roll partner. As such, he’s averaging a career-high 16.2 points per game. The trio watched from the bench for the fourth quarter against the Rockets, however, perhaps this is a sign of head coach Tyronn Lue‘s focus on the next game.
Meanwhile, another former Rocket, Kevin Porter Jr., has been surprisingly ineffective in his theoretical role as the team’s sixth man. In his return to Houston, his only statistical contributions were three fouls and a missed three in under six minutes of play. Besides that, the team comprises overtaxed and undersized wings, including Jabari Smith Jr.‘s nemesis, Kris Dunn.
The Last Word
With no Kawhi Leonard, which is certain (though it would be a fun twist if Leonard’s returns to action became as enigmatic as his absences), the Rockets are the better team. They should be able to get their NBA Cup campaign off to an inspired start. The group is theirs for the taking as well. If they fumble it, in the words of the evil space computer court itself, “It can only be attributable to human error.”
