LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. (AP) — James Harden couldn’t get his shot to fall all night, so the scorer turned stopper.
In this wild Game 7 that took one strange turn after another in the final seconds, the biggest play came when a guy known almost entirely for his offense turned up the defense.
Harden made up for a miserable shooting night with a big blocked shot, Russell Westbrook scored 20 points against his former team and the Houston Rockets edged the Oklahoma City Thunder 104-102 on Wednesday night to win the first-round series.
“It was one of those nights offensively so I just wanted to change the game defensively and I think I did that,” Harden said.
The Rockets pulled out a tense final game of the first round that lasted long past the final basket as replays and fouls were sorted out.
“I’ve been around a long time and just at the end it was a little crazy,” Houston coach Mike D’Antoni said.
In the end, Houston prevailed to set up a second-round matchup with the Los Angeles Lakers that begins Friday despite Harden, the NBA’s leading scorer, going 4 for 15 from the field.
Robert Covington made a free throw with 1.4 seconds to go and Harden was whistled for fouling Danilo Gallinari before the ball was inbounded, giving the Thunder one free throw and the ball. But Gallinari missed the free throw and the Thunder turned it over on the last inbounds pass.
Westbrook helped defend that, perhaps remembering some of his old coach’s plays.
“I kind of know a little bit,” Westbrook said.
Covington had 21 points and 10 rebounds, and Eric Gordon also scored 21 points for the Rockets. Harden finished with 17 points and nine assists.
Dort scored a career-best 30 points for the Thunder. Chris Paul, swapped for Westbrook over the summer, had 19 points, 12 assists and 11 rebounds.
“It’s a tough one. It’s tough,” Paul said. “We fought hard all year. Honestly, a lot of people doubted us, but we didn’t doubt ourselves. We didn’t give a damn about anybody’s predictions going into any series.”
It was a wild conclusion to a strange series in which the Rockets won Games 1 and 2 handily and Game 5 by 34, the biggest margin in franchise postseason history, but hadn’t come through in the close ones. Oklahoma City took Game 3 in overtime by outscoring Houston 15-3, the largest overtime point differential in NBA history, and pulled out Game 4 by three points and Game 6 by four.
The Rockets had no chance of winning this one in a rout thanks largely to Harden’s struggles. He missed 10 of his 12 shots through three quarters but they were ahead 85-80 behind a strong performance from Westbrook, who missed the first four games of the series with a strained right quadriceps.
Covington then hit a couple key 3-pointers in the fourth and Harden made two of his three shots in the period, including a basket that snapped a 99-all tie.
The Thunder closed the first quarter with a 10-2 spurt to take a 30-29 lead. Then it was Dort with a 12-point second quarter, hitting three 3-pointers to continue a remarkable turnaround from Game 5, when his 3-for-16 night included going 0 for 9 behind the arc. He bounced back with 13 points in Game 6.
“It was one of the most impressive things I’ve seen out of a player that young,” Thunder coach Billy Donovan said.
One of his 3s gave the Thunder a six-point lead, but Houston closed strong to lead 61-59 at the break.
Houston got the final five points of the third on a basket by Westbrook and a 3-pointer by Jeff Green, another former Oklahoma City player.
TIP-INS
Thunder: Dort, an undrafted rookie originally signed to a two-way contract who played 13 games this season in the NBA G League, scored the most points by a Thunder rookie in a playoff game. … The Thunder were called for delay of game twice in the first half. The second, an automatic technical foul, came when Paul remained in the lane tying his shoe in an apparent attempt to give Donovan a chance to challenge a foul that had been called on the point guard.
Rockets: Houston is 7-5 in Game 7s, including 1-1 under D’Antoni. The Rockets had lost their two other Game 7s in the first round, against Utah in 2007 and Dallas in 2005. … Green scored 13 points.
HERE AND NOW
Nobody knows yet when and where the NBA will return after this season and D’Antoni has other questions about the future, with the contract expiring after this one. But he said he wasn’t thinking about any of that leading into Game 7.
“Not really. I think the moment’s too big to get distracted,” he said. “We’ve been through a lot, I’ve been through a lot in all kinds of different ways, so I’m just looking forward to tonight.
MIAMI HEAT 116, MILWAUKEE BUCKS 114 (MIAMI LEADS 2-0)
Jimmy Butler loves soccer, and the final scene from Game 2 of the Eastern Conference semifinals resembled a penalty shot in a shootout.
Only there was no goalie.
This was just a free throw, no time on the clock, nobody else from the Miami Heat or Milwaukee Bucks standing along the lane. Game tied, two chances to make one shot, the outcome completely in Butler’s hands.
“I wish I could kick it in there and say that’s how I won it,” Butler said.
Rattling home a free throw will have to suffice. Butler got the first one to bounce home, made a second one that was irrelevant, and the Heat grabbed control of their East semifinal matchup with a 116-114 win over the Bucks on Wednesday night — becoming the first No. 5 seed to take a 2-0 series lead over a No. 1 seed.
“I’d say we’re disappointed with the judgment, the decision, the timing,” Bucks coach Mike Budenholzer said.
Crew Chief Marc Davis said the foul call was correct.
“He must be allowed the space to land and Giannis contacts him with his left hand on his torso and I felt like it affected his balance and did not allow him the space to land in a normal basketball position,” Davis told a pool reporter postgame. “As a result I judged this to be a shooting foul.”
It was a bizarre ending to, well, a bizarre ending.
The Heat were up by six with 27 seconds left and frittered that away, Butler giving Milwaukee two points with a most ill-advised pass — “a terrible IQ play,” he acknowledged — back toward the Bucks’ basket that turned into a layup by Brook Lopez.
That got Milwaukee within two, and Butler made one free throw with 7.7 seconds left to get the lead back to three. Khris Middleton was fouled by Goran Dragic — a call Miami argued to no avail, because the Heat unsuccessfully used their challenge on a foul of Lopez shooting a 3 in the first quarter — with 4.3 seconds left, and the All-Star made all three free throws to tie it. Davis, in the postgame pool report, said Dragic was properly assessed a foul.
Butler wound up with the ball in the deep corner, and Antetokounmpo — the reigning Defensive Player of the Year — contested.
“I feel like, personally, it was the right play,” Antetokounmpo said.
Then came the whistle, and that was that. Milwaukee couldn’t challenge the call; the Bucks used their review to overturn what would have been Antetokounmpo’s fourth foul on a charging call into Butler early in the fourth quarter.
“In the judgment of the officials, the foul occurred, I guess, at some point when he landed,” Budenholzer said. “In the judgment of the officials, there was enough to warrant a foul.”
“Doesn’t take a genius to know that we were going to try to get that ball in Jimmy’s mitts and see what can happen from there,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. “He was very patient. There were four seconds left. I think a lot of players would have rushed. He took his time.”
Antetokounmpo had 29 points and 14 rebounds for the Bucks. Middleton scored 23 points for Milwaukee, which got 16 apiece from Lopez and Eric Bledsoe and 14 from George Hill.
Miami’s lead was 90-86 entering the fourth — and Milwaukee had the lead back on the very first possession of the final quarter.
Middleton was fouled on a 3-point try, made the first two free throws and the rebound of the third was controlled by the Bucks. Kyle Korver made a 3-pointer off that rebound to cap a five-point possession for Milwaukee, which had the lead again for the first time since 14-13.
The Heat were undeterred. They scored 13 of the next 15 points to not only reclaim the lead but push it to 103-93 on a 3-pointer by Crowder with 7:50 left.
They wouldn’t trail again.
But on a physical night — 71 foul shots were attempted, there were two flagrant fouls and a technical on a play where another flagrant was being considered — the Heat stood tallest at the end.
“You can’t relax, you can’t get comfortable,” Butler said. “They’re too good of a team.”
TIP-INS
Heat: Dragic has scored at least 20 points in six consecutive playoff games. It’s the 12th such streak in Heat history; Dwyane Wade had six, LeBron James had the other five. … Andre Iguodala left in the third quarter with a sprained right ankle, which he turned when he didn’t have space to land and came down on Korver’s foot.
Bucks: Antetokounmpo, who was 4 for 12 from the foul line in Game 1, started 4 for 5 from the stripe in Game 2. He finished 9 for 13. … Milwaukee outrebounded Miami 50-38.
FOULING ON 3’S
The Heat fouled the Bucks five times on 3-point tries in the game, including twice against Lopez in a 26-second span of the first quarter.
5 OVER 1
Since the league went to the 16-team format in 1984, only four No. 1 seeds have dropped the first two games of a first- or second-round series. Phoenix (1993, in a best-of-five) and Boston (2017) both rallied to win first-round matchups; Toronto got swept by Cleveland in the 2018 East semifinals.
UP NEXT
Game 3 is Friday.
Photo credit – Mark J. Terrill / Pool via AP / Lake Buena Vista, FL