(Note: Follow me on Twitter at @DreamShakeSBN for basketball tweets. Do it. Now. My other account will stick to, well, me.)
Credit the Rockets with playing this one hard until the very end. The better team got the win, but the Rockets have nothing to hang their heads over, perhaps aside from their inability to keep San Antonio out of the paint and off the free throw line.
The bench gets tonight's game ball, as Courtney Lee, Goran Dragic and Patrick Patterson pumped life into a Rockets team that got outclassed in the first quarter. Dragic, a notorious Spur-killer, posted ten points on 5-6 shooting, while Patterson played determined defense and recorder three emphatic blocks, one of which led to a half-court buzzer beater by Kyle Lowry to close the third quarter. And Lee did what Lee does: he made threes, forced turnovers and got out in transition like a cheetah chasing its first prey in weeks.
Instead of your typical ten thoughts from tonight, here are ten tweets from the revived @DreamShakeSBN Twitter account that will serve as tonight's recap (how lazy), followed by some additional, necessary thoughts.
1. "Rockets doing nothing to slow Tony Parker. No help from the bigs, tough for the wings to contain him."
2. "Manu just took three Rockets and turned them into a cone drill."
3. "Sadly, an emphatic Jordan Hill dunk will probably make most forget about his slew of terrible fouls, offensive rebounds allowed."
4. "Kevin Martin isn't about to let Tony Parker out-foul-draw him in the lane. Or something like that."
5. "SOMEONE GET STEVE NOVAK A SHOT SO I CAN RELIVE THE GLORY I DON'T CARE IF THE SPURS GET THREE POINTS FROM IT."
6. "I think Kyle Lowry is sharing his #KyleLowryOverEverything-ness with Goran. It's a scientific happening, people."
7. "This has become such a good game that I don't care about Terrence Williams any longer."
8. "Patterson's energy and vertical leap = an extra few inches of both height and wingspan, for those who obsess over the necessity of 'size.'"
9. "Despite little defense, this feels like your older brother's scrappy, feisty, underdoggish Rockets. Nice feeling."
10. "That's a terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible call. And Tim Duncan will get the whistle over Courtney Lee every time."
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The Spurs did a fantastic job of forcing the Rockets into committing turnovers and managed to bag six of them off of Kyle Lowry, but the Rockets actually scored two more points off San Antonio's ten turnovers, thus essentially negating the total. In the end, San Antonio managed to take better shots to end the game, benefitted from a few untimely whistles and prevented Houston from gaining a leg up on Portland and Memphis. DeJuan Blair did his typical damage against the Rockets and finished with 14 points and 9 rebounds, but it was the balanced Spurs attack that levied the scale in their favor.
We'll end with this tweet, and then we'll hope that a five-game sweep of the remaining games in the homestand is on its way.
@DreamShakeSBN: "I really don't like Manu Ginobili, but if his cheap shot on Brooks helped bring me Goran Dragic, I have no choice but to thank the man."