GG Jackson scored 20 points, Jaren Jackson Jr. had 18, including 11 in the fourth quarter, and the Memphis Grizzlies beat the Houston Rockets 121-113 on Wednesday night to snap their nine-game losing run.
Luke Kennard finished with 19 points, including two free throws in the last minute as the Rockets attempted to overcome Memphis down the stretch. Lamar Stevens, acquired through a trade deadline swap with the Celtics, scored 14 points. Vince Williams contributed twelve points, eight rebounds, and seven assists.
“It definitely feels good,” GG Jackson said about breaking his losing run. “NBA players or any athlete hates to lose.”
Dillon Brooks, Alperen Sengun, Amen Thompson and Aaron Holiday all scored 19 points in Houston’s fifth loss in the last six games. The loss was the last game for Houston before the All-Star break, and at times it showed.
“It’s been that way for a while now,” Rockets coach Ime Udoka said. ”Maybe we overestimated the challenge, but we came out like the softest squad in the league.”
The lack of energy was a common theme between Brooks and Udoka. The Houston coach said he plans to look at his starting lineup and rotations during the break.
“We played down to our competition,” said Brooks, who spent his first six seasons with the Grizzlies. “That will stick with you during the break.”
After cutting Memphis’ advantage to 84-81 in the third quarter, the Rockets took their first lead of the game, 88-87, when Thompson split a pair of free throws with 10:07 remaining.
Memphis responded with a 17-5 run to reclaim a double-digit lead, which Stevens would later extend to 11 points on a pair of free throws.
“We had a poise to us that was great,” said Kennard, who went 5 of 7 from the field and connected on 4 of 6 from beyond the arc. He later added: “Guys made big plays. Jaren did his thing in the fourth….Overall, the fourth quarter was really good defensively, and I thought that helped us.”
The Rockets’ lone win came on Monday night, when they defeated the New York Knicks 105-103, and Holiday’s two winning free throws with less than a second left came when the Knicks’ Jalen Brunson was called for a foul, which officials later said was an incorrect call. Both teams were in the Western Conference’s bottom half.
Memphis built a 23-point lead in the first half on accurate 3-point shooting, which was still hovering around 50% midway through the second quarter. The Grizzlies couldn’t keep up the shooting pace, and then got sloppy with the ball, allowing the Rockets to get back into the game with a 26-8 run late in the half. Memphis held a 58-49 lead at intermission, thanks to a couple of late baskets.
“They started hitting 3s, and we started freezing up,” said Brooks. “We can’t have that.”
Throughout the losing streak, Memphis kept many games close, with only two losses by more than ten points. The Grizzlies frequently lost control in the fourth quarter.
“We’ve been in different ballgames the last couple of weeks,” Taylor Jenkins, the coach at Memphis, told reporters. “Up 20; down 20. Fighting back. A lot of this has come down to the fourth quarter. Defensively was huge late. There was great discipline.”
