It’s that time of the week again where we break down yet another second half of an ESPN doubleheader, and this time we’re taking it to H-Town to see Carmelo Anthony’s revenge tale that’s set to tell itself at 9:30 p.m. ET as the Houston Rockets look to defend their home court against a Portland Trail Blazers team that’s hungry for a win to get back in the Western Conference conversation.
We know the main storyline here that’s going to hog up all the tension in the Toyota Center this Wednesday night: the team that was supposed to be Carmelo Anthony’s final lifeline to an ailing NBA career who let him go last season just 13 games in is front and center to deal with the wrath of the new Blazers forward, who is still showing all prognosticators that keeping one of the game’s all-time elusive and efficient scorers on the home couch with a sturdy 16.3 ppg. off a 43.4 field goal percentage and a still astounding 39.4 three-point percentage at the tender age of 35 years young.
And for a team that’s actually inept at stopping frontcourts from running amuck in the 26-win Rockets, who are only 17th in the league in total defensive rating, Anthony might like the taste of licking his own chops in what should be a back-and-forth offensive showcase involving some of the league’s most elite playmakers in James Harden, Russell Westbrook, Damian Lillard, and CJ McCollum to backup Anthony’s already-provided star power in tonight’s Western showdown.
As this season traverses for the Rockets, they have won five of their last eight games and are looking to make it six in lieu of their impending three-game homestand that’ll involve the Lakers, Thunder, and Nuggets. Last night’s loss to the Memphis Grizzlies was one of those cheeky, “aww-the-rookie-got-us” kind of games that pop up on the record like small blemishes since, literally just hours before their loss to the confident Ja Morant and the new purveyors of grind in the young Grizzlies, the Rockets, more specifically James Harden, (the league’s leading scorer and the leading vote-getter in the Western all-star voting) just tore into the Timberwolves at home, and not even with their entire starting five on the floor as Clint Capela took the night off from a heel contusion.
That being said, they’ll still have their hands full in trying to keep the foot on the pedal against this Trail Blazers team that albeit hasn’t been all that great this year, now a full seven games under an even record. A gutsy grind-out win over the slumping Hornets may have been a small shot of momentum in Terry Stotts’ rotation and though they’ve entered a two-game skid, you just have to think that it’ll only be a matter of time until a team so adept at utilizing their exceptional skill pieces finally finds that spark to carry them into that space where they have a chance to make a playoff push.
Game two of this ESPN doubleheader takes place at 9:30 p.m. ET on ESPN.
Recent Comments