ROCKETS WIN!
Fred VanVleet leads Rockets to sixth straight victory over Nuggets
Nov 13, 2023, 1:13 pm
Another win for Houston! Photo by Carmen Mandato/Getty Images.
HOUSTON (AP) — Fred VanVleet scored 26 points and Alperen Sengun added 23 to lead the Houston Rockets to a 107-104 win over the Denver Nuggets on Sunday night.
Houston’s six-game winning streak is the longest since January 2021.
Nikola Jokic had his fourth triple-double of the season, racking up 36 points, 21 rebounds and 11 assists in the loss.
Jokic hit a 3 with 19.1 seconds remaining to cut Houston’s lead to 103-102. He had a full-court shot at the buzzer to tie it but fell short.
The Nuggets entered the game 8-1, their best start since the 2018-19 season. Houston improved to 6-3 after starting the season 0-3.
“We’re getting better,” VanVleet said. “We can feel the trend trending upward, we’re trying to get more things done that the coaches are asking us to do, and we’re executing at a higher and higher level each time out.”
Rockets veteran Jeff Green hit a big 3 with 1:49 left in the fourth, putting Houston up 103-94. Green appeared in all 20 playoff games during Denver’s championship run last season. Green scored 15 points off the bench Sunday.
“He obviously made big shots and was attacking the basket,” Rockets coach Ime Udoka said. “But also, all week, he had a ton of advice and experience, and he was out there being the quarterback on defense, calling out their sets and what they were getting into. He had that familiarity with the team and obviously that was helpful, but it was great to see him come through down the stretch, finish the game and make some big shots. I’m happy for him.
”Denver entered the fourth quarter with a 76-74 lead thanks to a 20-foot jumper from Collin Gillespie with 2 seconds left in the third.
Sengun added eight rebounds and five assists, while shooting 9 of 18 from the field.
“I think it’s a good thing that they’re playing more through him,” Jokic said of Sengun. “I think it’s going to benefit their whole organization. He’s a guy who is not selfish, he wants to play for the team, he wants to pass, and the whole team is going to move when the ball is in his hands. He played really good today.”
Behind Jokic, Michael Porter Jr. scored 25 points, Aaron Gordon had 16 and Reggie Jackson added 14.
“The greatest challenge that we have is we’re trying to compete for a championship but also develop four young players off the bench,” Nuggets coach Mike Malone said. “That is insanely hard because young players are going to have nights like tonight, and you have to continue to support them and help them in any way that you can, and that’s what we’re going to do. We know these guys are capable.”
Houston has won two in a row against Denver following a 10-game losing streak.
“It gives us another feather in our cap,” Udoka said. “It gives us experience with late-game execution and getting the shots we want and defending. I’m happy with how we finished. They did hit some tough shots, but that’s expected from a championship-caliber team.”
UP NEXT
Nuggets: Host the Los Angeles Clippers as part of the NBA In-Season Tournament play on Tuesday night.
Rockets: Open up a three-game California road trip with the Clippers on Friday night.
They’ll be watching in Canada, not just because of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, though the NBA’s scoring champion and MVP favorite who plays for Oklahoma City surely helps lure in fans who are north of the border.
They’ll be watching from Serbia and Greece, the homelands of Denver star Nikola Jokic and Milwaukee star Giannis Antetokounmpo. Alperen Sengun will have them watching Houston games in the middle of the night in Turkey, too. Slovenian fans will be watching Luka Doncic and the Lakers play their playoff opener at 2:30 a.m. Sunday, 5:30 p.m. Saturday in Los Angeles. Fans in Cameroon will be tuned in to see Pascal Siakam and the Indiana Pacers. Defending champion Boston features, among others, Kristaps Porzingis of Latvia and Al Horford of the Dominican Republic.
Once again, the NBA playoffs are setting up to be a showcase for international stars.
In a season where the five statistical champions were from five different countries, an NBA first — Gilgeous-Alexander is Canadian, rebounding champion Domantas Sabonis of Sacramento is from Lithuania, blocked shots champion Victor Wembanyama of San Antonio is from France, steals champion Dyson Daniels of Atlanta is from Australia, and assists champion Trae Young of the Hawks is from the U.S. — the postseason will have plenty of international feel as well. Gilgeous-Alexander is in, while Sabonis and Daniels (along with Young, obviously) could join him if their teams get through the play-in tournament.
“We have a tremendous number of international players in this league,” NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said earlier this season. “It’s roughly 30% of our players representing, at least on opening day, 43 different countries, so there’s much more of a global sense around our teams.”
By the end of the season, it wound up being 44 different countries — at least in terms of countries where players who scored in the NBA this season were born. For the first time in NBA history, players from one country other than the U.S. combined to score more than 15,000 points; Canadian players scored 15,588 this season, led by Gilgeous-Alexander, the first scoring champion from that country.
Gilgeous-Alexander is favored to be MVP this season. It'll be either him or Jokic, which means it'll be a seventh consecutive year with an international MVP for the NBA. Antetokounmpo won twice, then Jokic won three of the next four, with Cameroon-born Joel Embiid of the Philadelphia 76ers winning two seasons ago.
“Shai is in the category of you do not stop him,” Toronto coach Darko Rajakovic said after a game between the Raptors and Thunder this season.
In other words, he's like a lot of other international guys now. Nobody truly stops Jokic, Antetokounmpo and Doncic either.
And this season brought another international first: Doncic finished atop the NBA's most popular jersey list, meaning NBAStore.com sold more of his jerseys than they did anyone else's. Sure, that was bolstered by Doncic changing jerseys midseason when he was traded by Dallas to the Los Angeles Lakers, but it still is significant.
The Slovenian star is the first international player to finish atop the most popular jerseys list — and the first player other than Stephen Curry or LeBron James to hold that spot in more than a decade, since soon-to-be-enshrined Basketball Hall of Famer Carmelo Anthony did it when he was with New York in 2012-13.
“We’re so small, we have 2 million people. But really, our sport is amazing,” fellow Slovene Ajsa Sivka said when she was drafted by the WNBA's Chicago Sky on Monday night and asked about Doncic and other top Slovenian athletes. “No matter what sport, we have at least someone that’s great in it. I’m just really proud to be Slovenian.”
All this comes at a time where the NBA is more serious than perhaps ever before about growing its international footprint. Last month, FIBA — the sport's international governing body — and the NBA announced a plan to partner on a new European basketball league that has been taking shape for many years. The initial target calls for a 16-team league and it potentially could involve many of the biggest franchise names in Europe, such as Real Madrid, Paris Saint-Germain and Manchester City.
It was a season where four players topped 2,000 points in the NBA and three of them were international with Gilgeous-Alexander, Jokic and Antetokounmpo. Globally, time spent watching NBA League Pass was up 6% over last season. More people watched NBA games in France this season than ever before, even with Wembanyama missing the final two months. NBA-related social media views in Canada this season set records, and league metrics show more fans than ever were watching in the Asia-Pacific region — already a basketball hotbed — as well.
FIBA secretary general Andreas Zagklis said the numbers — which are clearly being fueled by the continued international growth — suggest the game is very strong right now.
“Looking around the world, and of course here in North America," Zagklis said, "the NBA is most popular and more commercially successful than ever.”