A few days ago, Kevin Porter Jr. left a Rockets game at halftime and was fined a game suspension. On his return, he gave the Texans the win with a triple in the second.
In this way, those of Stephen Silas have added a new victory in their visit to Washington. The Houston team beat the Wizards by 111-114 to win their 11th game of the season, a victory that does not make them abandon the red lantern of the West but does continue to put the capital in complications. Those of Wes Unseld Jr., who started the season in the upper zone of their conference, have been falling to the positions of play-in With the passing of the weeks, and defeats like this one will hardly allow them to recover the lost places.
The clash came tied in the last 20 seconds, at which point Porter took the ball and began to let time pass so that his last attempt came as close to the horn as possible. With about 6 seconds left, the point guard received a direct block before which the home defense changed assignments, which allowed him to stay paired with Raul Neto, the smallest man on the court and who would have the most difficult point in his launch. So, it was a matter of bringing out his quality: bounce, side step, triple and victory.
Porter was not exactly signing a great game, but he knew how to appear at the key moment to score his third pitch of the night in 13 attempts and reach 9 points: “We prepared a play that was worth as much for Jalen as for me. Whoever was defended by Neto would play the last shot. He was the man we wanted to pitch on. When I saw that they changed in the block, I knew that I had to be aggressive and look for the launch.
Jalen Green might have seemed a more logical option on paper, as the rookie was, just with Christian Wood, the Rockets’ leading scorer with 22 points. However, many times when these final seconds arrive, it is useless to trust what happened until then, and this is just another proof.
The Wizards, meanwhile, were led by Bradley Beal’s 27 goals, who found support in Kentavious Caldwell-Pope’s 26 and Kyle Kuzma’s 24. However, the rest of the men were very far from being so productive, which made the citizens of the capital have problems to gain control of the crash and ended up adding a painful defeat both in the forms and occurring at home and against one of the worst teams according to classification. We will see if they are able to rebuild for the next matches and re-look like the team that astonished locals and strangers in the first weeks of competition.
(Cover photo: Carmen Mandato / Getty Images)