On December 30, Beijing time, the NBA regular season continued, and the Rockets, who suffered two consecutive defeats, played at home against the Philadelphia 76ers today. Both teams are missing important players in this game, Embiid can't play on the 76ers, and Dillon and Smith Jr. on the Rockets side are also out due to injury.
At the beginning of the first quarter, the Rockets played well, once leading 13-4, but then the 76ers immediately responded to narrow the difference, but at the end of the Rockets' bench was full of vitality to always maintain the lead, the first quarter of the game, the Rockets led by 6 points 32-26, and in the second quarter, the 76ers Maxey and Harris went directly to the storm, and the two scored consecutive points to overtake the score, and at the end of the half, the Rockets led by 1 point 63-62.
In the third quarter, the Rockets once again opened the gap to double digits, but the end was chased back by the 76ers; and then in the fourth quarter, the 76ers' offensive efficiency was outrageous, and they quickly overtook the score, and the two teams played back and forth at the end of the period, and the score alternated many times, and at the last moment, Morris's 3+1 almost killed the game, although Green then scored 5 points in a row to maintain the suspense of the game, but the last attack Rockets did not score, the game ended, and finally the Rockets lost 127-131 to the 76ers and suffered 3 consecutive defeats.
Green, who has been criticized for 21 years in this game, performed very well, 12-of-19 and 5-of-9 three-pointers with 31 points, 6 rebounds and 4 assists, but made two fatal mistakes in the final moments:
One was that he did not foul Harris who had the ball in time with about 15 seconds left in the game, causing Harris to pass the ball to Melton, and finally Shin Kyung was forced to foul, which caused Shin Kyung to leave the court with 6 fouls.
The second mistake was that when he was down by 3 points with 8 seconds left in the game, he passed the ball to Landale instead of Tate in the bottom corner. What is outrageous is that then Landale actually chose to make a layup instead of giving Holiday and VanVleet, who have a large gap in the bottom corner and 45 degrees on the left side, and what is even more outrageous is that Landale has not scored a layup to bury the game directly. One thing to say, Green's options for pulling up and shooting three-pointers are probably better than passing to Landale.
Looking back, if Green had fouled Shen Jing on the court at about 15 seconds, would there have been no other mistakes later?