Houston Rockets trounce Pacers

DWIGHT Howard (right) and James Harden (center) of the Houston Rockets fight for position with Roy Hibbert of the Indiana Pacers. AUGUST DELA CRUZ

Midway through the fourth period, Omri Casspi rescued a miss with a wild tap that turned into an extra possession for the Houston Rockets. There was a drive by Jeremy Lin, there was an extra pass after an extra pass and then Casspi capped the fun sequence with a three-point play that got a lot of love from his bench.

If that was any indication at all, this could be how the Rockets will look once the season rolls along: Deeper than last season, fast and quite enjoyable to watch.

Houston started hot and stumped the Indiana Pacers with a lot of pace en route to a 116-96 victory last night in the NBA Global Games preseason match at Mall of Asia Arena.

The Rockets scored the first 12 points of the game—within the first three minutes of the opening period—and never allowed the Pacers to get any rally going to notch the victory.

“We wanted to get out to a good start,” said Rockets coach Kevin McHale. “We set some defensive goals and the first unit gave us a strong start defensively.”

The game had preseason written all over it. Both teams were far from the forms their coaches want them to be once the regular season rolls around. But there was still enough action to excite the crowd.

Fans cheered a dunk by Dwight Howard, the newly acquired Rockets center, and strong scoring finishes by Houston star James Harden. They roared when Jeremy Lin did anything at all and reserved a lot of cheers for forward Chandler Parsons, who became a crowd favorite after rumors that he went out with a popular Filipino actress.

Indiana had its share of supporters also. Paul George worked up the crowd with back-to-back treys to fuel a strong Indiana reply late in the first quarter. Danny Granger, who spent last season on the injury list, got a lot of cheers when he checked in as a sub.

But as the Rockets started to pull away, there was little reason for Pacers fans to applaud.

“Tough loss,” said Indiana coach Frank Vogel. “Houston had a lot of speed. It’s early in the season and our guys are still struggling in transition.”

Mostly, that Indiana transition defense struggled because the offense allowed Houston to run a lot.

“Our defense was phenomenal,” said Harden “We got stops, [forced] turnovers and that allowed us to get easy points.”

Vogel, though, did see something he liked: With a little more time, George and Granger could wreak havoc this season.

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