ROCKETS POSTCAST: In Massive Matchup, Houston Rockets Get Absolutely Smoked By The Denver Nuggets

0:00It's the Lockdown Podcast Network, your team every day. This is Nick Gangsta with the Lockdown Mavericks Podcast. This message is a paid partnership with Apple Card. I love that I can run up to 3% daily cash back on every purchase of my Apple Card, which can be automatically sent to my high yield savings account through Apple Card right in the wallet app. With my iPhone, I can use Apple Card with Apple Pay basically everywhere I go. You can apply for Apple Card, too, right in the wallet app on your iPhone. Subject your credit approval, savings is available to Apple Card owners, subject to eligibility, savings in Apple Card by Goldman Sachsbank, USA Salt Lake City Branch member FDIC, terms and more at AppleCard.com. You're juggling a lot, but you can still squeeze in a financial plan. With the Northwestern Mutual Financial Advisor as your partner, it's not only possible, it's personalized. So if you're tying the knot, closing on a house, or welcoming a little one, you'll be ready for whatever life tosses your way. It's the right time to feel less stressed and more certain.

1:03That's a better way to money. Let's get started at nm.com, the Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company Milwaukee, Wisconsin. For the second time in the last three games, the Houston Rockets have played a contender in the Western Conference, a big boy in the Western Conference. They've gone out there and they have absolutely laid an egg. That's exactly what happened again tonight in Denver as the nuggets roll through the Rockets with ease. And we're breaking down all the problems on the Lockdown Rockets Postcast. You are Lockdown Rockets Postcast. Part of Lockdown Sports Houston on the Lockdown Podcast Network. Your team every day. 129.93, the final tonight between your Houston Rockets and the Denver Nuggets as the Rockets cannot come close to making competitive down the stretch after a competitive first half.

2:07Absolutely no answer for the nuggets all the second half. Hello and welcome to Lockdown Rockets Postcast. I am Michael Conner. Thank you for joining us. If you are new to this show because it's only the second night we've been back with it and you're wondering where's Jackson Jackson is still here. He does the Rockets daily show. This is the Lockdown Rockets Postcast. We're here with you live after games. I'm not going to say this every time we do a postcast. I just want to remind people because it's only the second time we've done one this season. We are with you the rest of the season outside of Friday's game. I have a previous commitment on Friday that was ahead of getting the green light to bring these shows back. But tonight we talk about it all. The Rockets were absolutely terrible. The turning point in this basketball game was this. I'm the reveal where the game was once or lost. It's the turning point. The third quarter tonight was absolutely atrocious. I got the box score here just from the third. Rockets get out scored 40 to 22 in that third quarter.

3:08They go, oh, they from the three point line. They shoot the ball horribly in that quarter and they're 44% and Denver shoots 52%. And for 83% from the three point line in that quarter, the Rockets turn it over four times in that quarter and just get absolutely trounced in that period. I mean, it was a competitive game in the first half. I mean, you go to half, they hit the three there right before the buzzer to extend the lead to six. But I mean, it was looking like I was going to be a three point game, 53, 47 at the half. The Rockets did all that without shooting the three at all in the first half and that's what turned out to be all of the issues in this basketball game is that the nuggets now look, there is a human element to any evaluation of a sports game when it happens, right? You and I can be humans when we look at it and realize the Rockets are on the back end

4:09of a back-to-back where they played and Houston last night had to play it, you know, all the way through to get that victory and have to get on a plane, go to Denver, get in it probably between what, two, three, four or something. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. So between two and four in the morning, if you've ever been to Denver, the Denver airport is nowhere near downtown Denver. So it's a 45-minute drive at least. You're probably not laying your head down to what, six something in the morning. This is my guess. Maybe it's a little bit earlier than that and you're trying to sleep on a non-normal sleep schedule, get up and then go play a basketball game in a city that's mile high. It's not easy, but when you are paid millions of dollars, of course, the expectation always is that you go out there and you get your best. And they had the effort in the first half.

5:10But this is the problem that this is now happened the second time in the last three games. Like I mentioned, you did this against San Antonio where you got absolutely just smacked around and then tonight, Denver just boat races in the second half. You didn't shoot the three at all tonight. The rockets as a team in the third or the from the three-point line in the game tonight shoot four of 33, 12% from three. That's a huge problem. Denver, I mean, you just got outnumbered at that point, Denver, 17 of 32, 53%. They had that issue. The turnover issue, of course, massive issue for this basketball team almost every single night, 15 of them tonight. And it really sparked a lot of the easy buckets and the quick runs that Denver went on throughout the basketball game. And then there's the fact that like I mentioned, running what I am concerned with with this basketball team is that you've seen two teams, two monsters in the Western Conference

6:17now in San Antonio and Denver really target some very similar issues that the rockets have and then just basically go afterball game. You saw Toronto. I mean, now Toronto runs a lot. We saw it last night, but you know, Toronto keyed in on it as well. The rockets don't move well in transition. They don't. They don't get back half the time. They're not good at pushing the pace. And it's a really frustrating aspect of this team. And then you mix it all in, you know, all these issues that I'm mentioning, whether it's, you know, that or the back to back. This is a massive game. There's 18 games left in the season coming into this one. This is a Western Conference. We talked about this last night that is so stacked up. And at the rocket slip up for three, four games, they're out of the top six easily.

7:24Two games better than the seventh seed right now in the Western Conference that being in the Phoenix Suns. So if you have a bad week, you could be on the outside looking in and saying, I have to plan a plan, which is still for the life of me. The dumbest thing the ever NBA has ever come up with. And maybe the idea is not dumb, but doing it with 10 team, it's just stupid. They should just stuck with the eight and done a play in with it, you know, the bottom for whatever, different thing for a different time. But tonight's game was a game of consequence. You know, there's a chance to help yourself. Rockets go to the four seed now at this moment. It's going to change every night at this moment. They're now matched up to play the Minnesota Timberwolves. They would have the home court advantage in that one. Makers go up to the three seed nuggets, stay at the six at the moment. All those teams though have 40 wins. Denver is one worse in the lost column than the Rockets are at this point.

8:27Rockets now 40 in 25 on the season. But this is a chance with this schedule. Denver, by the way, wins the season series over the Rockets with that victory tight three to one. That's also the non-encouraging part of this. We talked about it last night, and I mentioned it. We don't want absolutely no part of playing the Denver Nuggets in the playoffs. The Rockets, here's just the unfortunate and we can live in reality. The Rockets are not as good as the Denver Nuggets. I just, I can't say over a seven game series, it's just not going to happen. It's just not going to happen. They can beat the Lakers. They'll play with the Timberwolves, Timber puppies. They handle Phoenix, I think. Can't play with San Antonio. Can't play with Oklahoma City. And I don't think they could play with Denver. Those three teams clear cut class above where this Rockets team is.

9:28That's okay. Some years just works out that way. It's not that this team is bad. This team is good. It just hasn't worked out the way that we all saw it working out when the season started or when we put our predictions together, of course, for what this season would be. And it's disappointing when you have a night like tonight. This late in the season in a game that matters so much where you just come out and lay an egg. It can't happen again. Now you look at this schedule down the stretch, you got an easy one against New Orleans come up, you think, but you got a Lakers twice next week. At home, you have to have those games period. You still have a matchup against the Timber Wolves on the 25th of March in Minnesota, have to have that one. Playing Phoenix, April 7th, have to have that one, playing Minnesota again, April 10th, have to have that one, a lot of have to have games on this schedule the rest of the way.

10:31And it's time to put up or shut up. And it comes to stepping up in these kind of games. Final thoughts. Do I even give out a player of the game? I guess right here in the lockdown, rocket postcast after these messages. It is tax time for a lot of us, the old way of doing taxes is a lot trying to book an appointment. It's not the most convenient, still waiting a or still in a waiting room with a stack of papers emailing back and forth and wondering if they really got your situation. But this year, you're not getting a major upgrade. You are getting a major upgrade, I should say, into a turbo tax. Now has in-person locations nationwide, you can be face-to-face with a real tax expert and your documents get uploaded straight to your turbo tax app on the spot. Just like that, you're done. Your turbo tax expert gets to work for you for every dollar that you deserve while you

11:31get real time notifications as you go about your day. It's the relief of walking in and meeting a real person and walking out knowing your taxes are being handled right. Head to TurboTax.com slash local to find a store near you and book your appointment. Before we get back to our rocket's discussion here tonight, there's nothing like being in an NBA arena, crowd the energy, the moment, getting there, getting the tickets though. At part, isn't always made so simple. It's like game time has become the go-to app for scoring tickets fast without the hassle. It puts the advantage back where it belongs with the fans. Look, you can get all the pricing up front, the all-in price up front is fantastic. There's no surprise fees to check out. And then you have the ability to look at your seat before buying, which makes the decision even easier. Take the guesswork out of buying NBA tickets with game time, download the game time app, create an account and use code locked on for $20 off your first purchase.

12:34That's code L-O-C-K-E-D-O-N for $20 off. Download the game time app today and remember, it's gametime.co, not.com. This is Nick Gangthead with the Lockdown Mavericks podcast. This message is a paid partnership with AppleCard. I love that I can run up to 3% daily cash back on every purchase of my AppleCard, which can be automatically sent to my high-yield savings account through AppleCard right in the wallet app. With my iPhone, I can use AppleCard with Apple Pay basically everywhere I go. You can apply for AppleCard too, right in the wallet app on your iPhone, subject to credit approval, savings is available to AppleCard owners subject to eligibility, savings in AppleCard by Goldman Sachsbank, USA Salt Lake City Branch member FDIC, terms and more at AppleCard.com. Alright, I feel gross for having to do this tonight, but who is? This is the Lockdown Player of the Game. I mean, I guess if I have to give it to a rocket, I give it to a min Thompson, just because of the team that's scoring with 16.

13:36I should give it to Jeff Green, who was the only guy that wasn't a negative in the plus minus category. You know, that's what it would do. We're going to give the player the game to Jeff Green. He played seven minutes and 33 seconds, but he's the only player in the plus minus category that wasn't a minus double digit number. He was minus three. The starters plus minus here, you go real quick. Jubari minus 12, KD minus 18, Alpy minus 17, Tari minus 17, Amid minus 17. I'm going to get to the reach, reach, shepherd minus 26 yikes. That's the word for this game. Look for one word to describe this basketball game tonight. It is yikes. And the yikes part of it too is, I mean, that's, you know, I know there's a, there's a, there's a lot of issues from this basketball game tonight, but credit to Denver. I mean, they took KD out of this game. That's a little bit scary. That's why I really don't want anything to do with Denver. I mean, they just took KD out of the game. Period.

14:36You got to pay shots tonight. They're just throwing doubles, triples at him. They don't respect whatever else the Rockets had to throw at them offensively. They're saying, you know what? Good luck. Good luck. And tonight, it worked out big time for Denver. They just, you know, they went out there and it was not great. I do want to mention again one more time because I keep seeing it in the comments as we're doing it live. I just pulled them up. I've not replaced Jackson, Gatlin. This is a post cast show. It is a post game reaction to what happens in every game, the rest of the season. We did these last season. We did the whole season, unfortunately, you know, timing-wise, they just, we just got to go ahead to do these. I'll be here the rest of the season and in the playoffs, we'll be here doing the show in the games. And Jackson is still doing the daily show, so make sure you're checking out what he has to say on a daily basis. I'm here to give you your instant reaction as soon as the game is and be like you on a

15:40hand. I want to see them do well, but I'm going to be mad when they go out there and play like this, like all of you are tonight. They, of course, will get right back to action in a couple of nights, Friday night at home against the New Orleans Pelicans. Like I mentioned, we will actually not have a show for that one when I got the Green Night to do these shows. I already had a commitment on Friday, so there will not be a show Friday just ahead set. But we'll be back Monday for the first of two against the Lakers next week before they also allow or will allow welcome the Atlanta Hawks of Town. And then welcome Pam out of bio in the Miami Heat to town next weekend as well. Hopefully he doesn't go for 83. That would be a problem. Congrats to him on setting the second most points in the NBA game last night. I didn't even mention that during the postcast show yesterday. That's on me. I knew it and I just didn't mention it. You guys have a great rest of your, I don't know what night it is Wednesday night at this point, almost Thursday morning. We will talk again next Monday on this show specifically on the locked on rockets,

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