The Rockets had spent the season searching for two things: ball movement and body movement.
The worse the loss, the less they moved. And after each standstill defeat, Rockets coach Rick Adelman lamented the tendency to stand around, waiting for Tracy McGrady to create or Yao Ming to somehow catch the ball down low and draw double-teams. There had been signs of improvement. In three of four games since the blowout loss to the Lakers, the Rockets moved the ball well and scored consistently. But in those games, they did not feel late-game pressure, did not have to come back in the fourth quarter or hold off an opponent's charge.
In the first two games of the road trip, they did. And finally, with games on the line, they had ball movement and body movement. For a second consecutive game, they got Yao touches too deep for opponents to stop him without using double teams. For the second consecutive game, that led to Yao scoring inside and players working off him scoring on the perimeter.
"You can't come down to him on the strong side and just say we're going to throw it in. You have to go from one side to the other and not make it so obvious," Rockets coach Adelman said. "We changed the sets we were running. We wanted to take it to one side, then come back to the other and make it harder for them to zero in on him."
Against the Mavericks, when things were tough, the Rockets stood around. Yao was out that day, and McGrady still has not shown an ability to take on defenses loaded to stop him.
Against the Wizards and Magic, he didn't have to, and Yao got touches down the stretch because of everything that happened before the ball got to him.
ROCKETS 100, MAGIC 95: The Rockets did not need a fourth-quarter comeback quite as extreme as the night before, when they went from a nine-point deficit to a 12-point win. But against a far better team, with the Magic carrying a five-game winning streak as opposed to the Wizards and their search for a second win of the season, the margin for error was much smaller. So down the stretch, the Rockets rarely made a mistake of any kind, executing in the fourth quarter for the second time in as many nights, to go from down three to a five-point win.
The Rockets made 60 percent of their shots in the fourth quarter, scoring on six consecutive possessions to build a six-point lead. Down three early in the quarter, the Rockets went ahead by as much as eight. Ron Artest hit a pair of jumpers and a 3-pointer, and Yao Ming scored on a drive, a tip and a tough fadeaway jumper to take over the game.
