HONOLULU — The Rockets saw the usual benefits of their trip to Hawaii but much of their motivation to holding a few workouts before playing the Clippers in Honolulu was to break up the trip to Tokyo for the Global Games against the Toronto Raptors.
"We kind of forced the issue," Rockets coach Mike D'Antoni said. "We wanted to come here. We have our games in Japan so we thought this would be perfect to have a game here. Luckily, we got the Clippers to be able to work it out. One, you don't pass an opportunity to go to Hawaii.