Game two of ESPN’s Wednesday Night Hoops showcase features the Houston Rockets prepare to do battle for the fourth and final time this regular season against Carmelo Anthony, Damian Lillard and the injury-rattled Portland Trail Blazers at 10:00 p.m. ET.
This is the second time these teams lace up since the passing of the Black Mamba, Kobe Bryant, and though the grieving process hasn’t been the easiest for both teams, the show must go on. This game wasn’t supposed to be stapled onto the ESPN calendar, flexed into the national spotlight via the postponement of last night’s Lakers-Clippers game inside of the Staples Center.
For reasons a little too sentimental to be left to explanation, the two organizations decided to push their third duel of the season to a later date, thus setting up this matchup of the two-highest scoring backcourts in the NBA. The last time these two faced off, it resulted in Anthony getting the long-awaited revenge he had sought after being released by Houston a year ago.
Damian Lillard in the meantime has been on the most ravenous rampage of his career, averaging a wild 52.7 points per game over the course of the last three games and his Pacers were finally able to get over the losing hump with a huge win over Indiana, 139-129. And get this, per Casey Hodahl of NBA.com, the 158 points Lillard has scored over the last three games ranks sixth all-time for a three-game stretch.
Number one? Kobe Bean Bryant, with 175 back in 2007.
Offensively, Portland has been phenomenal in the month of January, led by none other than Dame, but on defense is where the Blazers have faltered, now ranked as the 27th-best defense in the NBA. Yet, irony flashed it’s cheeky smile the last time they played Houston, as the blitzing, trapping and double-teaming worked against James Harden in their ability to force the rock out of his hands and into the palms of others like Russell Westbrook and PJ Tucker.
Harden scored 13 points and honestly, since then, has been on the ugliest of slumps in shooting a mediocre 22.7 percent from deep in one of the greatest offensive seasons we’ve seen from any guard in league history. Granted, he’ll get out of it sometime soon now that he’s been cleared to return from an injured quad tonight, so that chance for Harden to explode for 40+, or something of that magnitude is already existent. Houston walks into this one with a previous win over the Utah Jazz in which Eric Gordon, starting in place for Harden, went ballistic in dropping 50 off a super-efficient 14-of-22 shooting outing.
Portland heads to LA on Friday in what could easily be the most emotional night in the history of the league but has a huge task ahead of them for their one-game homestand tonight.
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