You get the feeling Terrell Brandon, Kevin Garnett and the Minnesota Timberwolves are going to be giving these young Rockets a hard time for a long time.
After the Dream-led Rockets owned the Timberpups for so long, it's apparently payback time as Minnesota completed a 4-game season sweep of the Rockets with a humiliating 32-point blowout in the Target Center.
The 122-90 loss snaps a brief 2-game winning streak and drops the Rockets' record to 27-45.
Brandon continued his mastery of Steve Francis (3-10 shooting, 10-11 FTs) and the Rockets, going for 16 points and 9 assists in the first half and finishing with 21 and 13 on 9-14 shooting in just 31 minutes.
His partner in crime, KG, led all scorers with 25 points and snared 9 boards.
The Rockets were led by... who else? Walt Williams seems to be the scoring show these days as he hit 7-11 shots for 18 points and 7 boards. Kenny Thomas also played well, scoring 16 and grabbing 7 boards.
The amazing thing is the Rockets shot 47 free throws -- 47! They even hit 38 of those -- almost 81%. The Timberwolves shot just 16 free throws, but when you sizzle to the tune of 60% from the field (to the Rockets 37%) you really don't care.
I just shook my head at the Twolves' announcers all night. They were so drab I almost started watching "Cable Guy" to actually improve the entertainment value, and that's sad.
At one stage of the game one of their guys said, "The Rockets making a bit of a run now. At one point they were down 13, they trail now by just 11." Hmm -- really took a chunk out of that lead. At another point in the game they just went nuts on how badly Shandon Anderson has struggled this season and how much of a mistake he made coming to Houston.
I didn't understand that one -- points, rebounds, steals, assists, blocks, field goal percentage, three-point percentage all up from last season. Early in the season perhaps, but Shandon has been fantastic since finding his niche with the club...
That's it: Mandatory drug testing for NBA announcers.
Walt Williams had a great first quarter, scoring 8 on 4-5 shooting and grabbing 4 boards, but Terrell Brandon drained a jumper at the first quarter buzzer, giving him 10 points and 6 assists in the period, and the Wolves led 33-28 after one.
Interesting to note that Rudy made no substitutions in the quarter -- all 5 starters played the period exclusively.
The Wolves got hot in the second quarter though, and with about 5 minutes left in the half they led by 13, 53-40, and were shooting 71%. The Rockets trailed 65-49 at the half, and Brandon was 7-9 for 16 points and 9 assists at the break.
