Rockets’ Harden showcases playmaking touch to seal Raptors’ fate

James Harden kept up his run as the hottest player in the NBA, scoring a game-high 35 points for the Rockets in a 121-119 win against Kawhi Leonard and the Raptors.

HOUSTON — For all the obvious reasons, the talk before the ball went up was about how to stop their guy; the guy who can’t be stopped.

In the end, the Toronto Raptors did a passable job slowing down James Harden, the Houston Rockets’ high-revving scoring machine, but they couldn’t get out of their own way often enough as Harden eventually had his way with them.

“He’s playing at a high level. He’s always a guy that can go off for 60 points,” Raptors forward Kawhi Leonard said in the buildup to his club’s first meeting of the season against Harden, who came into the game averaging 43.1 points in his last 21 starts, scoring at least 30 in every one, the longest such streak by anyone not named Wilt Chamberlain. The streak is at 22 now.

“[He’s] aggressive on every possession,” Leonard continued. “Also [he’s] willing to pass [and has] guys out there that can shoot the ball, space the floor for him. But it’s just his overall mindset, trying to will his team to win, taking shots, making shots.”

Leonard’s scouting report proved prescient – not so much about Harden’s scoring. Two nights after going off for a career-high 61, the Raptors held Harden to 35 points on 25 shots, in part by limiting him to just 2-of-13 from deep.

All in all, good work, considering Vegas bookmakers had his over-under at 41.5 points, but not good enough to upset the Rockets at home in an impressive 121-119 win by Houston, dropping Toronto (36-15) to 0-2 on their three-game road trip that wraps up Sunday night in Dallas.

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It wasn’t a historic-type night from Harden, but he scored enough and his seven assists meant that the Raptors could zone in on him at their peril. He also continued to get to the foul line at will.

“We did a good job other than fouling him,” said Leonard. “He got to the line 15 times. We wanted to keep him under 10 or get him at least at 10.”

Toronto grinded on a night when nothing came easily and they were continually coming back from double-digit deficits. They actually — and improbably — had a chance to win on the last possession as they knocked down four threes in a 54-second flurry that left them with the ball down two with 18 seconds to play after trailing by 11 with 1:21 to play and by 19 early in the fourth quarter. The Rockets helped them with a late turnover by Eric Gordon and an ill-advised shot that gave the Raptors the ball back with 20 seconds to play.

But it got a little ugly at that point. Norman Powell – guarded by Harden – was late to set a screen for Leonard designed to get the Raptors star in isolation against the Rockets star, not known as strong defender. But Harden pushed Leonard hard to his right and forced him into a fading three-pointer at the buzzer that was well short.

“It was supposed to be a middle [pick-and-roll] coming down, but the way they came down on the defensive end, they came to the left a little bit more,” said Leonard. “There was already three [defenders] on the left side so I came over that way so I could get a push going right.”

Said Raptors head coach Nick Nurse: “We just didn’t get to where we wanted to get to soon enough.”

It was a strange end to a strange quarter and a strange game. The Raptors’ furious comeback obscured the fact that they made 21 turnovers for 24 points – incredibly 11 of those for 14 points in the fourth which blunted their late-game heroics.

“I think we just didn’t play up to our potential,” said Lowry whose offence disappeared – he was 2-of-9 and 1-of-6 from three — with Leonard’s return to the lineup after a four-game ‘load management’ absence. “We didn’t play hard enough, at all. Both ends. We didn’t play hard enough.”

If there was a single through-line in the game, it was that the Rockets role players supported Harden in a way that makes Houston tough to beat, as the likes of P.J. Tucker finished with 18 points and recent acquisition Kenneth Faried chipped in with 21 points and 14 rebounds — including six on the offensive end — his energy catching the Raptors on their heels.

The Raptors could only wish they got that kind of lift from their stars. Lowry once again looked tentative offensively, while Leonard’s effectiveness was largely limited to a dominant stretch in the second quarter where he scored 13 of his 32 and a nine-point surge in the fourth. His line looked impressive — 11-of-19 shooting with seven rebounds and five assists – but his six turnovers suggested some rust and once again, the Raptors’ lack of late-game cohesion was evident.

Early on, it appeared that the Rockets would run away with it, in part due to Harden’s efforts to find his teammates. But the Raptors kept the game close and made several runs of their own. Before their late flurry, they were closest when XX Powell (10 points and three assists) drained a deep three to pull Toronto within six with 8:34 to play, but then the Rockets pulled hard on the rope and the Raptors let go as they jumped out to a 14-3 run over the next three minutes that Toronto couldn’t recover from in the end.

Otherwise, the Raptors best moments came in the in the second quarter as they mounted an impressive run to enter halftime trailing only 70-61 –- no small feat given they trailed by 22 with 7:57 left in the second quarter.

For the most part, the Raptors were able to keep Harden contained with Danny Green – who scored 22 points and knocked down six triples — doing most of the dirty work.

“I feel like I did a decent job,” said Green, who will be getting an X-ray on his left hand Saturday after jamming it on Harden’s shoulder. “To the best of my ability to not let him get any open ones, into a rhythm from the three-point line.”

But the Rockets and Harden have you on a knife’s edge all game long. At any point they can slice you open and eventually they did.

What wasn’t talked about much before the game was how Leonard was going to fare, and how the Rockets might try and stop him. Leonard is on a pretty good streak himself: he came into the game scoring at least 20 points in 20 consecutive games and averaging 30.4 points over that stretch.

In the very early going, the Rockets’ solution was to throw Tucker at him – one of the few wings in the league who can match up physically with Leonard. But after shaking off the rust, Harden got rolling too. He contributed 17 first-half points on just seven shots, 13 in the second quarter alone.

But in the second half Leonard saw a variety of physical defenders and he struggled with them at times, his box score looking better than his overall game.

By his standards, Harden’s totals weren’t all that much, but he did enough – which was a lot – and got the help he needed and one of the NBA’s most intriguing stories kept rolling at the Raptors expense.

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