Written by Matt Moore at CBS Sports.com
Don’t think of Spurs-Rockets as a chess match. That means there are pieces all over, interlocking and combatting one another in complicated ways. This is not D’Antoni’s rook to Pop’s Knight 3. This is a tug of war, a push and pull between two distinctly different ways of viewing basketball.
On one side, Gregg Popovich has won two games with the Spurs behind a double-big, grind-them-out, slow-it-down, contested Kawhi Leonard mid-range and LaMarcus Aldridge ground-and-pound assault. In Games 2 and 3, they swung the rope to their side, threatening to slide the Rockets right out of the game with brute force.
On the other, Mike D’Antoni’s Rockets blitzed the Spurs with pace and space, drilling 3’s and getting to the rim at will in Game 1, then, facing the edge of oblivion, Houston — out of necessity as much as anything– doubled down on its approach in Game 4, going nitro-small in a 125-104 victory Sunday to even the series 2-2.
Best of three. Muscle and thunder vs. speed and lightning. Let’s settle how you can win in today’s NBA, right here in Texas.
In Game 4, there was a lot that seemingly went against the Rockets’ way. Clint Capela picked up foul trouble, while Nene went down with a groin pull that looks like it could sideline him for the duration of the series. The Rockets were forced to bring Ryan Anderson off the bench at center in the third quarter as the Spurs made their run. The Spurs pounded the ball down low to LaMarcus Aldridge and scored time and time again. But the Rockets matched them with speed and 3-pointers.
The Math Problem, as it’s called, came about, and Houston outscored the Spurs by one point the rest of the way, prompting Popovich to throw the towel in. The reserves were deployed, and the series resets as it shifts to San Antonio for a huge Game 5.
LaMarcus Aldridge scored 10 points in the 3rd quarter… but the Rockets made eight 3-pointers.
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