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Monday February 9, 2009 11:05 PM

Bucks Send Rockets To Another Discouraging Defeat

Milwaukee uses second-half surge to cruise past Houston 124-112

Jason Friedman
Rockets.com Staff Writer

Houston - Tracy McGrady strode toward the basket, preparing himself for an uncontested fastbreak dunk. He rose up on the run, twisted in midair and… never even reached the rim.

Right then and there, T-Mac and his teammates should have known it wasn’t going to be their night.

Repeatedly shredding Houston’s suddenly suspect defense, the Milwaukee Bucks sent the Rockets to yet another discouraging road defeat, this time by a final score of 124-112.

Houston (31-21) has now lost four of its last five games away from home and conceded more than 100 points in all five contests, continuing a disturbing trend of no-show defensive efforts away from the friendly confines of Toyota Center.

“We were very casual tonight,” said a frustrated Rick Adelman after the game. “Give Milwaukee credit; they hit a lot of shots and played really well. But you’re not going to win on the road playing the way we’re playing and defending the way we’re defending.

“This has happened time and time again on the road. We play with more energy, resolve and urgency at home, then we go on the road, knowing the other team is going to come out and play hard, and we don’t match [their effort]. They did everything they wanted to do and we didn’t put up any fight.”

Making the loss even harder to swallow for Houston was the fact that the Bucks came into the night missing three members of their starting lineup (Michael Redd, Andrew Bogut and Luke Ridnour). But that hardy seemed to matter as Milwaukee still saw four of its players surpass the 20-point threshold, and shot a scorching 52.8% from the field as a team.

The Rockets, meanwhile, couldn’t come close to keeping pace – at least not their starters. Remove Luis Scola’s 7-for-8 effort from the equation and Houston’s starting five were an anemic 5-of-28 on the evening. In fact, it was only a tremendous performance from the Rockets’ bench brigade which kept the final score looking somewhat respectable.

“We scored more than 100 points tonight but, right now, our offense is really not clicking,” said McGrady. “It’s not really flowing. There’s too much one-on-one. There’s no ball movement. We don’t have an identity. We don’t know who we are. We gotta find that.”

Still, offensive issues aside, the Rockets seem more concerned by the sudden disappearance of their trademark stingy defense; especially after surrendering a season-high 124 points to a shorthanded Milwaukee squad not exactly known for its offensive prowess.

“We can sit here and pretty much talk about what we talked about a couple of days ago after the [ Memphis] game,” said McGrady. “It’s defense. We don’t know how to play, we don’t execute defensively. Right now, we’re just a team that doesn’t know how to play defense.”

Yet with no quick-fixes available and time starting to slip away, Coach Adelman says his team is left with only one recourse.

“You have to take it each game. I can’t look ahead to what’s going to happen the whole season. We’ve got to find a way to get some kind of consistent effort night after night. All you can do is keep working at it.”

QUOTES

Ron Artest

(On tonight’s game…)

“I thought we played good but they played better. Sometimes a team is actually better than you and that’s what happened tonight. They played really, really good tonight. If they play that way all the time, they’ll go to the playoffs.”

Head Coach Scott Skiles

(On tonight’s game…)

“I thought everybody played well offensively. Richard ( Jefferson) had a nice game, he did a good job breaking them down. We had 31 assists and seven turnovers; you’ll take that 82 times if you can get it. They just made some really good decisions with the ball.”

(On defending Yao Ming …)

“Francisco (Elson) started, his activity was very good on Yao. Then we were running Danny (Gadzuric) and he was the same, and Malik (Allen). I thought all three guys played him tough. It didn’t hurt of course to get him in foul trouble. We did what we needed to do.”

(On Richard Jefferson …)

“Richard has; my personal opinion, has done a heck of a job all year helping stabilize our team. When Mike went out the first time and now we have guys out again. He’s been a very stable player for us.”

Guard Richard Jefferson

(On tonight’s game…)

“The ball has really been moving. Even if you look at the Detroit game, we got guys are who are really sharing the ball. We’re a high assist team as most teams are when their playing good basketball.”

(On increased roles of the team …)

“Guys like Ramon Sessions early in the season. Charlie V, his minutes have increased. Charlie Bell has been getting healthy. I think everyone has had an increased role at some point in time during the season, but now it’s just more of a permanent thing.”

Charlie Villanueva

(On tonight’s game…)

“I think we played a solid first half on the defensive end. It worked for us on the defensive end and it turned into a lot of points.”

(On the team playing together …)

“It was a team effort, a lot of guys playing and sticking to the plan. The opportunity is there to play a lot of minutes. You just have to take advantage and be consistent too. It has to be a team. We don’t have a few players so it has to be everybody.”

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