After finishing with a .500 record last season, the Houston Rockets are playing aggressively and unselfishly — and they’re surging.
The Rockets will look to sweep their two-game road trip Wednesday night when they visit the scuffling Philadelphia 76ers.
Houston improved to 13-6 with a hard-fought, 117-111 overtime win against the Minnesota Timberwolves on Tuesday. The Rockets rallied from a five-point deficit with just under two minutes left in regulation before storming in front in the extra session.
Fred VanVleet recorded 27 points and 11 assists and Alperen Sengun notched a triple-double for Houston, which squandered an 18-point lead before prevailing against a tough opponent.
“So, I said to the team, âThat was probably one of the sweetest wins of the year, for those reasons,’” Rockets coach Ime Udoka said, adding that “a lot of teams would fold when you let a big lead like that go away. We had to find a way to get it back.”
Houston finished with 31 assists on 45 buckets and knocked down 15 of 37 3-pointers (40.5 percent), including six by VanVleet and four by Dillon Brooks.
“It was poppin’ around, and you’ve got to make shots, obviously, to take advantage of that,” Udoka said. “We didn’t really get bogged down too often tonight.”
The Rockets are 8-2 in their past 10 games as they continue to climb in the Western Conference standings.
“When we play like this, it’s really hard to play against us,” Sengun said. “We played hard. We shared the ball. … That’s the game we are playing lately, and everybody enjoys it. We look different this season.”
Meanwhile, the Sixers look different as well — but not in a good way.
Philadelphia snapped a five-game losing streak Friday against the Brooklyn Nets, but the momentum didn’t last through the weekend, as the 76ers were pounded by the Los Angeles Clippers 125-99 on Sunday.
Nick Nurse’s team fell behind by 19 points in the first quarter and allowed the Clippers to shoot 58 percent from the field for the game.
“I think there’s several things, but the biggest thing was just lack of keeping the ball in front of us, really, from the defensive end,” Nurse said. “They just drove it to wherever they wanted to to start the game.”
Philadelphia continued to play without Joel Embiid and Paul George, both of whom are nursing knee injuries, as well as Kyle Lowry (hip). All three will miss the matchup with Houston, the team announced Monday.
In the meantime, the Sixers have one of the league’s worst records at 3-13 amid a slew of key injuries. One positive has been the play of rookie guard Jared McCain, who is averaging 16.6 points this season, although he was just 3 of 15 from the field in Sunday’s setback.
“I don’t know,” McCain said. “I mean, I think we’ve just got to come up with more energy. It’s something that we can control. We can always control our effort and energy, but we’re not right now. … So I feel like we’ve just got to talk about that and make sure we just adjust.”
Philadelphia has won eight of the past nine matchups with Houston, including both meetings last season.