The Rockets do not have much margin for error, as Eric Gordon has put it often in the past two weeks, with James Harden out. That often means that they have to make their 3s, or at least have one or two shooters go off because they don’t have Harden to manufacture scoring when everything else fails.
For the second-consecutive game, the Rockets misfired early. But once again, they found other ways. They got to the rim in the second quarter, relied on defense through the first half, crashed the boards in the third quarter.
Things did not come easily, but they won the hard way, showing they might have more in their bag than they thought, mixing a Ryan Anderson spike of a slam that showed how far from one dimensional they might be.