Tuesday night's game between the Houston Rockets and Brooklyn Nets had the spirit of March Madness, and I'm not sure whether I intend that in a complimentary or derogatory way. Both teams were struggling to make free throws, finish layups, or just hold onto the ball long enough for an actual shot to go up. It was, at times, a very rough watch. But the finish made up for all of it.
The sloppiness was a key factor in how Brooklyn, a team that likely won't make the play-in, snatched a 99-97 win away from Houston. Walking out of the arena afterward, one fan within earshot compared it to Reggie Miller's eight points in nine seconds against the Knicks. That comparison felt a bit too ambitious, but "six points in six seconds from two players" is tough to capture eloquently.
The sequence was quick: The Nets had possession and were down 97-93 with 9.1 seconds remaining. Tosan Evbuomwan passed it in to Keon Johnson, who raised up and cut the Rockets' lead to one. From there, the Nets could continue to extend the game with fouls, like they had been for the final minute. If you watched the full game, what happened next was the culmination of all the basic errors that came before: Amen Thompson's bad inbounds pass was stolen by Evbuomwan, who quickly tipped the ball to D'Angelo Russell behind the arc. Russell, who was at that point 2-of-14 from the field and had lost the ball before a potential game-tying shot seconds earlier, made the most of his second chance. Then Jalen Green's three-point attempt went wide, and that's how the lowly Nets beat the Rockets twice within four days.
That second three put the crowd in hysterics. Half the fans in my section had been checking their phones for long stretches of the game, even though neither team took a double-digit lead. After Russell's shot, the energy level was at "any New York Liberty game." These days, a Nets game is a good choice if you want to see a fun visiting team and don't want to shell out for Knicks tickets. My original purpose for going in person was to check out Alperen Sengun (24 points and 20 rebounds, with a solid second half) and Amen Thompson (seven points, seven turnovers, bad night). It feels like a bonus if Brooklyn plays to the opponent's level, but an actual home win against the third-place team in the West? That's not supposed to happen.
(This has nothing to do with the game, but I feel like I won't have a better opportunity to mention this: The touchless soap dispensers in the men's bathroom on the upper level of the Barclays Center do not work. They are definitely full—you can see the amount of soap in them—but regardless of how you wave your hand underneath, the soap does not come out. It has been like this for years. These dispensers have a worse shooting percentage than D'Angelo Russell last night. I don't fully understand the reason a soap dispenser needs to be touchless, anyway—even with a manual soap dispenser, if you touch the pedal with your germy hand, you're still using the just-dispensed soap to clean it right after. Who's touching the pedal and then not completing the hand-washing process right after? Anyway, I used hand sanitizer.)
With this upset, the Rockets have lost four in a row. They'll play two more road games in Minnesota and Dallas before they get to return home for a bit. Meanwhile, the Nets have won three straight and are spoiling their own chances in the draft lottery. They play the Wizards tonight; I think I'll skip that one.
