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James Harden sat in a chair in the visiting locker room with his feet in a bucket of ice and his knees wrapped in bandages when somebody plopped a laptop on his thighs to watch the replay of his scary fall.
The bearded All-Star guard played through the pain in his right ankle and his already nagging left knee to finish with 27 points and seven rebounds, stealing the spotlight from backcourt teammate Jeremy Lin in the Houston Rockets’ 116-107 victory over the slumping Golden State Warriors on Tuesday night.
”Very tough. I can barely walk. Still limping,” Harden said. ”I kind of felt the momentum going our way in the third quarter … so I didn’t want to shut it down.”
He didn’t.
And neither did the rest of the Rockets.
Chandler Parsons had 21 points, nine assists and eight rebounds, and Lin added 14 points and 10 assists to help Houston past his former team for the second time in eight days.
A week after the Rockets tied the NBA record with 23 made 3-pointers in a testy 140-109 rout of the Warriors, Harden took the Bay Area rematch off script…
Stephen Curry had 27 points and six assists and Jarrett Jack scored 22 points off the bench after missing the past three games with a right shoulder injury for the Warriors, who head into the All-Star break on a season-high five-game losing streak. The first four losses had come on the road.
”We’re not there yet. We’re not where we think we are,” said Warriors center Andrew Bogut, who had six points and 12 rebounds. ”I think we thought we were maybe a little better than we were.”
— Reported by Antonio Gonzalez of the Associated Press
