![]() Harden will opt into his contract and the 76ers will look to trade him, according to ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski. After months of speculation about whether James Harden would choose the 76ers or his former team, the Houston Rockets, it turns out that he will play for neither of them next season. That was far from a certainty a few days ago.The NBA offseason is usually good for a stunner or two, and boy, did the Philadelphia 76ers deliver on Thursday. Houston has put itself in a position to get the seed that it wants in the playoffs. ![]() But that would also mean getting the Los Angeles Clippers in the second round, a worse matchup for them than the No. ![]() 3, they would likely draw the weakened Utah Jazz in the first round. The question for Houston is, would they rather be No. Many of their guards were late to the bubble. They trail the Denver Nuggets by only a single game in the standings, and while the two won't meet in a seeding game, the Nuggets are currently compromised from a depth perspective. Midway through their win over Dallas on Friday, it looked like the Rockets could slide as far as No. The Bucks were comfortable playing their best big man. He has been their third-best player all season, and Houston's hope in playing so small is that teams like the Bucks have to take valuable players off of the floor to match them. Lopez remaining playable ensures that the Bucks will win the rebounding battle in every series they play, and their elite rim-protection will force opposing teams into worse shots. The Rockets took dozens of corner 3s in this game, and Lopez looked comfortable flying out to contest them. It's an option in their back pocket, and a good one some of the time, but Lopez just went a long way in proving that he can hang on the perimeter well enough in the playoffs to justify remaining on the floor. It suggests that they don't need to change their identity against smaller lineups. That is a big win for Milwaukee in the grand scheme of things. The Bucks won the minutes Brook Lopez played by six points and lost the rest of the game by 10. The Rockets likely assumed that their small lineups would force the Bucks to abandon what's worked for them all year long. That was the case on Sunday, and the Rockets got a big win out of it. Considering how rarely they turn the ball over and how many 3-pointers they make, they can afford to get killed at the rim if those other goals are met. Their defense exists to prevent 3-pointers and generate turnovers. ![]() They need a defense that supports their mathematical advantage over the rest of the NBA. 1 defense in basketball to win the championship. The Rockets flew around the court, deflecting passes left and right, stripping unsuspecting ball-handlers at a rate only possible without a center on the floor, and switching so effectively that the Bucks almost never generated open 3-pointers for their role players. The difference in effort and energy was night and day on Sunday. The Rockets played lazy defense and the Mavericks punished them for it. The problem for Houston on Friday wasn't scheme or roster. Houston played championship-caliber defense Here are the major takeaways from tonight's Houston win. Houston proved they could keep up with anyone in the league on Sunday. The Bucks were arguably their worst possible matchup, but it didn't matter. The Rockets now know they can hang with the NBA's best team. The moral victory is arguably as important as the actual one. The Bucks will now have to wait a few days to clinch the No. Houston's switching defense exists to take away 3-pointers, and Milwaukee's role players went only 4-of-20 from behind the arc. Their frontcourt trio of Giannis Antetokounmpo, Brook Lopez and Khris Middleton scored 86 points and grabbed 42 rebounds, but nobody else could give the Bucks much of anything. The Bucks lost the game despite finishing with 29 more rebounds than the Rockets. The Bucks shot only 9-of-35 from behind the arc in the game thanks to Houston's incredible defense. They took down the Milwaukee Bucks, 119-116, behind 22 forced turnovers and 48 minutes of flawlessly executed switching. Fortunately, the Rockets managed to figure out their defensive issues. The Houston Rockets played arguably their worst defensive game of the season on Friday in allowing 149 points against the Dallas Mavericks, and an opponent just as threatening loomed on Sunday.
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