Last-minute Changes, Reports, and News, Ahead of Rockets vs Nuggets

Saturday night, in Phoenix. 4 minutes and 24 seconds left. The Rockets and Suns were tied at 93. Then, Devin Booker scored all 9 of Phoenix's points in under 2 minutes, and the tie turned into a 7 point hole. Houston clawed back to 3, and with 10 seconds left, Kevin Durant got the look he wanted, a 26 foot 3 to tie the game. And... It missed. That was Houston's first two-game losing streak of the whole season. A week ago, this team was 7-1, and now we're 7-3. And tonight, the man that's walking into the Toyota Center is Nikola Jokic. Houston carries three centers behind Alper and Sengun, and all three of them are out tonight. That's the best big man in the world against only one Rockets big, and Houston is coming off its two worst passing games of the season. So, will the Rockets be able to stop this before... Two losses becomes three? Let's get into who's actually playing here in this one. Denver's injury report is a mess of its own. Six nuggets are listed as questionable for tonight, including all five of the starters. Jokic has a right elbow sprain, Murray a bruised left shin, Braun a calf sprains and an illness, and Julian Strawther is already ruled out with a knee sprain. DeRozan is having back spasms, and Aaron Gordon and Cam Johnson are listed for lower body injury management. Of course, Questionable does not mean out, and Denver just played in Mexico City on Saturday, so a lot of this is just the team managing injured bodies. My read is that Jokic is going to suit up in this one. He had 19 points, 13 rebounds, and 8 assists in that Mexico City win over the Pacers. And on the season, he's averaging 22.9 points, 10.1 rebounds, and 9.1 assists a game. Against Houston, the scoring jumps to 28.1 points a game over his last 8 meetings, more than 5 above what he's doing this year. Brown matters more than his name suggests. Denver is 17.8 points per 100 possessions better with him and Jokic on the floor together when that pair sits. If Brown and Murray both sit in this one, then Jokic is going to be running the offense with a lot of guys that he doesn't know very well, so that is where Houston can take advantage. The Nuggets aren't the machine that they were either. Their offensive rating ranks 9th in the league after finishing 1st last year. They've even lost at home to Portland a week ago, then beat Toronto by 19 and Indiana by 12, and they're 5-3. Jokic had 32 points and 11 assists on 68% shooting in that Toronto game, so when he's right, the record doesn't matter much. Houston's injury report is definitely a lot shorter, but it hits on the right spot where Jokic attacks. Steven Adams has a right calf muscle strain, and Ime Udoka says he'll be checked week to week. Clint Capella sprained his right ankle, and Oscar Scheibbe, who played three minutes in Phoenix, is out with an illness. So that's leaving Sengun as the only true center that the Rockets have in this game against Jokic. So when Sengun sits, the Nuggets have a real size advantage against Nikola. Even so, Houston is still an 8.5 favorite at home tonight. So that line suggests that the problem is fixable. So to fix them, you have to know what actually went wrong against the Suns. But first, let's go back to Minnesota on Wednesday because that was the bad one. Houston turned it over 22 times, and the Wolves scored 33 points off those turnovers. In a 10-point loss, the giveaways alone handed Minnesota more than three times the margin. Udoka's message afterwards, as Jacob Barzilla relayed it, was that the turnovers were the story. And the good looks only came when they took care of the ball. It was still a two-point game with three minutes left, and Jonathan Kuminga closed it out with two threes and a tip-in. Phoenix's game was bad too, but the turnovers weren't actually the problem. Houston had only 14 turnovers in Phoenix, fewer than his 15.7 a game this season, and we still lost. The ball just stopped moving. Houston had 16 assists. Phoenix had 29. 16 is actually the lowest of the season for Houston, and Amin Thompson played 39 minutes without getting a single assist, although he did play good in this game. However, Amin is at his best when he's attacking a defense that is moving, and unfortunately for the Rockets, this defense was causing nobody to move. During Booker's run, Houston's only two shots from the floor were Durant pull-ups and both of them missed. Durant finished 5-14 and 1-7 from three. On the other side, Jalen Green and Dylan Brooks, who Houston sent to Phoenix in the Durant trade, combined for 27 points against their old team. Durant's shot has cooled off in general, 47.6% from the field over his last five games, down from 54% earlier. The start has already buried him Houston was down 12 after the first quarter, then won the last three quarters by nine. If you put the three losses next to the seven wins, then it really stops looking like just two bad nights. In seven wins this year, Houston is averaging 29.1 assists a game, and in the three losses, just 21.3. In the wins, we're shooting 40.9% from three, and only 29.7 in the losses. Houston was behind after the first quarter in all three of the losses, against only once in the seven wins. The loss to Dallas on October 30th had the same shape. Down 7 after 1, then we outscored the Mavs 40-27 in the 4th. When the ball sticks, Houston will start slow, and they'll finish slow, because the game really just turned into Kevin Durant against a set defense. The good news is, we've seen the other side of this, and it also happened very recently. Back on Halloween, Houston beat OKC 119-98. They won that first quarter by 9 points, and they made 18 threes on 41 tries. Jabari Smith Jr. scored 30 points with 6 threes made, and Houston was 33 points better than with him on the floor. Two nights later, they beat Boston by 16 with 34 assists, still their season high, and Jabari went 4 of 5 from 3 in that one too. Both of those wins also came at home, which is where Houston is playing tonight. Sengun had 26 points and 10 assists against Boston, shooting 80% from the field. When he's humming, Houston scores efficiently. Its true shooting is 59.6%. 5th in the whole NBA, after ranking only 18th last season. Our finishers at the rim at 71%, 3rd in the league, and it gets there because the ball finds the cutter. Nothing about the roster change between that Boston win and that Minnesota loss, just the habits of the players did, which leads us right into the three keys tonight. Key number one. Houston scored 1.4 points per possession in transition, the best mark in the NBA. That's when Amin and Jabari do their best work, catching defenses off guards and getting to the rim before they're set. Denver is coming off this Mexico City game with all of their players injured. If Houston can make them run off the opening tip, then Amin should absolutely feast. Against Minnesota, they just got seven fast break points. To the Wolves' 19th, and that slow version is exactly where Denver wants to see. Key number two is going to be controlling the glass. Even in the loss to Phoenix, Houston still grabbed 15 offensive rebounds to the Suns' 9. Denver's rebound rate is slid to 17th in the entire league, from 8th last season. But with no backup centers, the rebounding can't be all on Sengun, so Amin and Jabari are going to have to crash the glass as well. With Sengun and Jabari together, Houston has a plus 16.3 a game. With Sengun and Jabari off, it's minus 6.2. The best version of Houston's frontcourt tonight is going to be Jabari and Sengun together, as long as the fouls will allow it. And key number three is going to be to actually take the right threes. Houston is making 38.9% of their threes from above the brick, third best in the entire NBA. Only 26.7% of its shots come from there, which ranks 28th. The shot to skip is the short floater. Houston makes 35.7% in the paint outside the restricted area, 26th in the entire NBA. Durant's midrange is fine on its own. Houston makes 49.4% from there, second in the whole NBA. It only hurts when it's the only shot that Houston's getting. Fred VanVleet made four of nine threes in Phoenix. That's the shot to hunt late, over a contested Durant pull-up. But of course, Jokic is the one Denver big who rarely punishes you from out there. He hits 21.2 from above the peak this season, against a 35% medium for players who take it as often. That means Sengun can sit in the paint when Jokic drifts out, and all three of these keys come back to this matchup. Houston is 19.4 points per 100 possessions better, with Alperen Sengun on the floor this season. His net rating is plus 15.2, ahead of Durant's plus 10.1, which makes him Houston's most important player tonight. Against Denver, though, he's averaged 16.6 points in his last eight meetings, about five below his 21.5 this season. The last two games weren't there for him either, 17 points on 33% shooting against Minnesota, then 15 on 31 against Phoenix. The passion is still there, though. He's at 8.6 assists over his last five games, up from 6.3 before. The catch is, the 10 assists against the Timberwolves came with 5 turnovers. And Sengun cannot pick up any cheap fouls tonight because there's nobody behind him. Jokic is definitely going to try to pull him into pick and rolls and try and make him defend for the entire possession. So Houston is going to need to make Jokic guard. Sengun needs to go at him early with Durant spotted up. That is Houston playing on his own terms. One more thing to watch, Sengun is 3 steals from passing Raffael Alston for 20th in Rockets history. And if you love the Rockets and you love this channel, help us hit our goal of 9,000 subscribers. We're at 8,970 right now. We would love to see it 9,000 before Wednesday. So smash that subscribe button. It would help us out a lot. So what's my call for this game? Of course, I'm saying the Rockets take this one, but I think it's probably going to be closer than eight and a half. The Rockets got a home floor and the Nuggets are pretty banged up with those six players questionable. Of course, the doubt is revolving around Nikola Jokic, who historically has been very good against this team. And with all the injuries to the Rocket Centers, we might have a big matchup issue. As long as the Rockets can start fast, win the first quarter, and keep those assist numbers up, then they should be golden in this one. A win would make us 8-3 with Golden State and Utah both coming to Toyota Center this week. Lose, and it's three straight before the Warriors arrive. And the rematch in Denver on November 20th starts to actually matter. Who wins the matchup tonight? Sengun or Jokic? Let me know down in the comments below.