Celtics limit Harden in dominant win over Rockets, 111-95

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We all knew the Houston Rockets were struggling this season, but damn … they can’t be this bad can they?

The Boston Celtics, fueled by a third quarter incident involving Amir Johnson and Houston’s Terrence Jones, put together a dominant performance on their way towards a 111-95 thumping of the Rockets.

Isaiah Thomas led all scorers with 23 points while Avery Bradley came off the bench for the second straight game and had 21 points.

Jae Crowder had a strong game as well, scoring a season-high 16 points.

The game was relatively close most of the first half, but took a sharp turn in Boston’s direction at the 6:45 mark of the third quarter.

Johnson, running the floor hard as always, wound up out of bounds on a play with the ball underneath his left arm.

Jones tried to grab it while towering over Johnson who appeared to be trying to get to his feet.

Other players got involved, technicals were handed out and from there … Boston absolutely crushed Houston.

The Celtics went on to close out the third with a blistering 26-8 run.

From there, the game was never really a game as Boston pushed its lead to as many as 29 points before the game clock thankfully ended.

Boston emptied the bench which led to the Rockets making the final score a lot closer than the final score indicated.

The Rockets continued to surge back into the game and were down by 16 points with 3:02 to play.

Brad Stevens had seen enough and called a time-out, clearly not happy with the way his end-of-the-bench players were handling this opportunity to some extended minutes on a night when the team’s rotation players absolutely thrashed a Houston team which has now lost four straight.

Even the Rockets’ James Harden, who usually puts up big numbers regardless of what the Rockets do as a team, was limited most of the night.

He finished with 16 points on 4-for-10 shooting which was one of his worst scoring performances this season.

 

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