Rockets clinch playoff berth
Balanced attack routs Clippers, assures postseason
By JONATHAN FEIGEN
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle
LOS ANGELES — They had no mad celebrations. There were no midcourt pileups, certainly no locker room champagne baths.
Theirs was more of a businesslike grab of a playoff spot, so the Rockets handled the Los Angeles Clippers with a fittingly business-as-usual 105-79 win on Sunday. They then celebrated with a simple sense of satisfaction and pride, not in the win that clinched it, but in all that went into turning a season around enough to head to a postseason.
"To us, it means a lot, because the day Yao Ming went down, everybody counted us out," Tracy McGrady said. "To this group, that is one of the things we wanted to prove to people: that we're still a team that is going to make the playoffs. We accomplished that, and we should be proud of ourselves for getting that done. Pretty much (everyone) had written us off. Especially how tight the West is, we were the forgotten team at that time.
"We knew we were going to make the playoffs. That's not really what this team is all about. Our thing is: What are we going to do when we get there?"
With that, the Rockets walked off with what they came for and marked the occasion accordingly.
"We just high-five," guard Luther Head said, "and say way to go."
That was sufficient as the Rockets matched last season's 52 wins with five games left. They return home from their five-game road trip alone in fifth place in the Western Conference, 2½ games behind leader New Orleans, and with coach Rick Adelman happy just to consider job one done.
"That's just a great win, to finish these three off to get to the playoffs," Adelman said. "This team deserves a lot of credit. With everything they went on, with the injuries, losing Yao and everything else, to be in the position we're in, I think they deserve a tremendous amount of credit. People act like losing Yao wasn't a big deal. It was a pretty big deal, and we never wavered. We're in there. Let's see where we can land.
"I've never been prouder of a team the way they sustained effort right through the entire year."
They had little difficulty getting the win to assure the playoff spot, though after they were through, Denver lost anyway, a result that would have put the Rockets in the playoffs regardless of their outcome against the Clippers. But rather than back in, the Rockets scored with little difficulty throughout.
With 18 points, Aaron Brooks led the Rockets in scoring for the first time in his rookie season, and fellow rookie Luis Scola added 16. McGrady continued to struggle with his shot, going just 5-of-16, but had nine assists and eight rebounds.
The Rockets led by as much as 22 in the first half before blowing the game open again in the second half.
"Tonight was typical," Adelman said. "At halftime, we almost have five guys in double figures. We were playing hard. Typical. We were in every game, competed every game."
The Rockets had not scored so easily since they left home for the five-game trip. They began to come out of it in Portland and blew out Seattle in the third quarter.
But those wins were nothing compared with the way they blew through the Clippers' approximation of defense in Sunday's first half.
Even with Adelman playing his bench most of the second quarter, the Rockets easily rolled to a 62-42 halftime lead, coming within four points of the most they had scored in a half this season.
With Brooks, Carl Landry, Chuck Hayes and Head playing with Shane Battier, the Rockets rolled through a 20-4 run to a 56-36 lead.
By then, the greatest threat to the Rockets' chances seemed boredom, a trap that briefly caught them but never held them as they took the win — and their playoff spot — with an appropriate finish and celebration.
"It was the way we need to play from this point on," Battier said. "We had balance. We played good defense. We moved the basketball. That's when we're at our best.
"We're very, very happy to have clinched. Considering all we've gone through this year — we started very poorly, we had an amazing hot streak, we lose our best player, we ran the gamut of emotions this year — to clinch a playoff spot in arguably the greatest playoff race in the history of the NBA says a lot about this team."
jonathan.feigen@chron.com
