They were about to let a game get away from them, and had they lost this one, the sting might have lingered awhile.

Anyway, the Rockets did what really good teams do at home. They dug deep within themselves, regained their resolve and defeated the Portland Trail Blazers 89-88 Sunday night to take a 3-1 lead in this best-of-seven first-round series.

Do you have a couple of hours? That's how long it would take to run down all the heroes.

Let's start with Chuck Hayes. He planted his feet in the lane and drew an offensive foul on Brandon Roy with 10.7 seconds remaining and the Rockets leading by two.

Give a huge assist to Rockets coach Rick Adelman, who had just inserted Hayes into the game and then got the biggest defensive play of the night.

"He's just incredible," Adelman said. "He's so quick and so smart."

Riding the Chuck wagon

Inside a happy home locker room, Hayes showed why he's so admired by his teammates.

He sometimes goes days without playing. He's not a gifted offensive player.

The Rockets enter almost every training camp thinking he might not make the team. Then the coaching staff is again impressed with his defensive brilliance and his intelligence and the fact that winning is the only thing that matters to him.

So when he steps into a playoff game and helps win it, people from the top of the masthead all the way down feel good.

"It was a gamble," Hayes said. "I had to take it. I got the benefit of the call."

There were plenty of other reasons to feel good. Kyle Lowry did a wonderful job running the offense down the stretch.

Shane Battier threw in a pair of 3-point jumpers in a 65-second stretch. Ron Artest had a big steal. Luis Scola had five huge fourth-quarter rebounds.

Finally, there was Yao Ming. He did a better job of getting free, and the Rockets did a better job of finding him. He finished with 21 points and 12 rebounds in a 44-minute minute marathon.

?Different look'

"He's our foundation," Battier said.

This was two really good teams going at one another and doing each other proud.

The Rockets trailed by seven early but were in front by six at halftime. In the locker room, Battier warned his team what was ahead.

"He told us it was going to be a dogfight," Lowry said.

The Rockets led by 11 midway through the third quarter and ended up trailing by six.

"Our body language wasn't the best in the fourth quarter," Battier said. "We needed something good to happen."

They kept fighting, and Scola's jumper tied it at 77 with 6:37 remaining. Suddenly, the crowd was back into it, and the Rockets fed off the energy.

"We had such a different look after the tie," Battier said.

It wasn't always pretty. The Rockets won because of 16 offensive rebounds and some huge defensive stops. They won it despite missing eight foul shots.

They also finished the night with 24 assists and just nine turnovers, an indication they were playing hard and smart even when they weren't playing great.

They combined a great game and a lousy one with another great one into a tidy little package.

"When they got aggressive, we got really impatient," Adelman said. "That's been our MO all year."

Maybe they got tired. Maybe they got bored. Maybe they thought the Blazers had no more fight left in them.

They lost a step on defense and got sloppy on offense. Aaron Brooks passed up good shots. Artest took bad ones.

So close, so far

Yao was lost in the low post somewhere, not getting the ball on some possessions, missing easy shots on others.

Artest was letting it rip again. He took 20 shots and missed 15 of them. Yet the 20-footer he made at the start of the fourth quarter helped get the Rockets back in the game.

Afterward, the Rockets answered the usual questions about not winning a playoff series in 12 years.

They've been close before, pushing Dallas and Utah to seven games in recent years.

"We still have one to go," Yao said. "We've been in this situation before."

richard.justice@chron.com