Second-half burst brings road win By JONATHAN FEIGEN Copyright 2002 Houston Chronicle UPDATE • Friday: Rockets 83, SuperSonics 72. • Boxscore • Record: 9-6. • Yao watch: Six points, five assists, four rebounds and three blocks in 29 minutes. • Sunday: At Sacramento, 8 p.m. • TV/radio: Ch. 51; KILT (610 AM) and in Spanish on KYST (920 AM). SEATTLE -- Rudy Tomjanovich tried at first to come up with the Rockets' last win in Seattle. Eventually, he remembered one in the 2000-2001 season. Then he worked on a win greater this season. He was stumped. To be fair, it was a trick question. The Rockets have never been better this season than they were in Friday's second half, and the resulting 83-72 win over the SuperSonics was unquestionably their best win, their first this season over a team with a winning record. "I'm as proud as I can be of a team," Tomjanovich said. The Rockets had their best offensive stretch of the season in the third quarter. Steve Francis found his jump shot. Moochie Norris made three consecutive down-the-stretch jumpers, his only shots of the game. And Yao Ming turned the game around with his passing. But more than anything, the Rockets shut down the SuperSonics in the second half, holding a team that rolled up 104 points in their first meeting to their fewest of the season by 12 points. The SuperSonics' 72 points were also the fewest the Rockets have allowed this season. Seattle had its fewest points in a quarter, 11 in the third, and in a half (26), when they blew a 10-point halftime lead. "Defense won this game for us," Tomjanovich said. "A big point is a lot of times when you struggle offensively, it frustrates you and you start (gambling) in the backcourt, wasting energy that opens things up. We got back. We stripped the ball a lot (getting eight steals). We blocked some shots (seven)." But shutdown defense often has not been enough. It was not in the first half when the Rockets made just 12 of 31 shots with 10 turnovers. But in the second half, the Rockets went inside to Yao, whose passing ignited the Rockets' offense. "It was really just a reaction, but I knew they were double-teaming heavily and there would be openings," Yao said. "We were not handling their double teams well in the first half," Tomjanovich said. "I told them to just swing it around the horn. Yao, his passing was going. Then Steve got it going. "We found a way. We adjusted to our environment. They had something going. We talked about it. We made a couple adjustments. We kept calm at halftime. It's great when the team goes out and executes, and somebody has to make a shot." Even after struggling offensively for most of the fourth quarter, they neatly put away the win with a poised finish. The Rockets led by six with just less than three minutes left. But consecutive plays by Yao -- stripping Desmond Mason on a drive and outfighting the Sonics for an offensive rebound and follow -- took the lead to eight. Mason hit a jumper to bring Seattle within six. But a jumper by Norris with 44.7 seconds left, his third in the fourth quarter, sealed the win. Norris scored seven of the Rockets' last nine points before the Sonics were forced to foul away the final half-minute. Francis led the Rockets with 21 and six assists. Kenny Thomas added 12 points and 10 rebounds. Yao's stop-the-bleeding follow gave him just six points, but his impact had been huge. With their offense stuck in the Seattle fog, the Rockets flashed forward several years, or at least months, and built their offense around Yao. He took one shot. He also turned the game around. It helped that the Sonics missed their first six shots of the second half. But in a span of four minutes, Yao's passing burned the Sonics' double teams, with Yao finding Glen Rice for a pair of 3-pointers and Juaquin Hawkins on a bolt to the rim. He drew a charge and blocked two shots. With that, everything that had been wrong turned right. Francis suddenly couldn't miss. After a 2-of-7 first half, he made six of seven shots to score 13 points in the quarter. Rice made three of four shots. The Rockets, shooting horribly through the first two games of the trip, rolled through the quarter making 72.2 percent to build an 11-point lead heading into the fourth quarter. The Rockets took the lead to 13 with Francis finding Kelvin Cato inside. But as quickly as they found their touch, they lost it. They missed their next three shots. Yao returned and missed a layup and a tough turnaround. Rice missed the most wide-open of 3-pointers. Francis missed a layup, Thomas a jumper. Francis clanged a pair of free throws, then two jumpers. It took six minutes, 10 missed shots and two missed free throws for the Rockets to score. But when Thomas hit a turnaround from 13 feet, the Rockets somehow still led 72-64. But by then, only a smattering of scoring would be enough. "If you look at the (chalk) boards, coach Tomjanovich wrote defense. Defense was the key to our victory today," Yao said. "They didn't score. We didn't allow them hardly anything in the third quarter."
Rockets summary Sonics' iron man When Friday's game started, Seattle guard Gary Payton claimed another franchise record. The game was No. 964 for Payton, passing Fred Brown for most games played for the SuperSonics. More remarkable than even the total has been the way he got there. Payton has missed just five games in his 13 NBA seasons. When he was suspended for a game in 2001 for insubordination with former coach Paul Westphal, it snapped a streak of 356 consecutive games played. Beginning with Payton's rookie season, 1990-91, no one has played more games. Karl Malone has missed only six games in the past 12 seasons. John Stockton has played every game in 11 of 12 seasons but missed 18 games in one season after knee surgery. Reggie Miller had missed only 17 games in 12 seasons before missing the first 12 games this season after spraining his ankle and bruising a bone during a practice with the USA World Championships team. "You can count on one hand the number of games missed," said Nate McMillan the Sonics coach and Payton's teammate for eight years. "He contributes in so many ways, scoring, rebounding, assists, 3-point attempts. You name it and he's done it." McMillan is third in Sonics history with 796 games played, followed by Jack Sikma's 715 games. Brown, McMillan and Sikma have had their numbers retired. Demands on Yao Heading into the home stretch of his first long road trip, Rockets center Yao Ming sounded pretty much like every rookie when he said the travel was wearing on him. Yao is, of course, not like every rookie. Few receive the kinds of off-court demands from media and even home teams that Yao has faced. That only adds to the burden of playing seven games in seven cities (including a home game) in 11 nights. The Rockets' five-game road trip ends Sunday in Sacramento. "I'm very tired," Yao said. "Definitely, I think I'm not used to it yet. (In China) we went to at the most two or three cities on a trip. "I feel the pressure is more on me than other rookies. That makes everything harder. I definitely think the travel is different. It just makes me tired." Yao has made some adjustments. In his first few weeks in the league, he said he was most challenged by the speed of the NBA. "I feel a lot better about the speed," he said, "A lot better on both sides." Praise from Cato When Kelvin Cato was away from the team for three games after the death of his grandmother, he was not out of touch. Cato caught all three telecasts of the games he missed and became a devoted fan of Bill Worrell's and Calvin Murphy's unique style. "They are all right," Cato said. "They are the best two out there, better than everybody out there. They say whatever they want to say. Everybody else has to hold their comments. Murph talks about everybody. He doesn't hold anything back on anybody. And he's funny. "What I like is he doesn't relate everything he says to himself as if he is still playing. He has his insight as a player, but doesn't say, "If I was playing ... " Defense does it The SuperSonics offense took most of the attention in their 8-2 start, but they knew defense was the key. If that was not clear in those 10 games, when only one team scored 100 points, it became obvious in the next six, when four teams reached 100. "We really haven't played our kind of defense in a long, long time," Sonics forward Rashard Lewis said. "Why? I'm not sure. We're playing guys who are making shots and we're not doing anything to stop them." The Sonics came into Friday's game off losses in Atlanta, when the Hawks rolled up 119 points in an overtime win, and Memphis, when the Grizzlies scored 99. "Teams have scored a lot of points in the last three games," Sonics coach Nate McMillan said. "I don't think our defense is where it was at the beginning of the season and I think that is due to teams sitting and waiting (while the Sonics had been on the road) and us having to spend so much energy and play almost mistake-free basketball in order to have a chance to win." -- JONATHAN FEIGEN
