HOUSTON — After fighting through a terrible chest cold for the last few days, James Harden finally felt like himself on Sunday night.
SPURS vs ROCKETS
And the Houston Rockets can, too, after his performance helped them rebound from consecutive losses to beat the San Antonio Spurs 125-104 and tie the Western Conference semifinal at 2-2.Harden scored 28 points and Eric Gordon added 22 as the Rockets never trailed and used hot 3-point shooting to pull away in the third quarter.
The Rockets led by 15 entering the fourth quarter and immediately padded the lead when Gordon made a 3-pointer to open the period. Simmons made a 3 on the other end before Gordon struck again with his sixth 3-pointer to leave the Rockets up 97-79.
The Spurs were unable to cut into the lead after that and both teams had mostly backups on the court by the midpoint of the period with the game out of hand.
San Antonio coach Gregg Popovich pointed to one big reason to explain why his team struggled Sunday night.