SPORTS WITH 3

Last night in the Mission Control called Toyota Center, our beloved Houston Rockets played the Denver Nuggets. The Rockets fell to the Nugs 93-87. It was a pretty ugly game. It looked like both teams were out of sorts and miscues, but Denver powered out of their funk while the Rockets' youth showed badly with turnover problems. The leading scorers for the Nuggets were Ty Lawson with 21 points and 8 assists and "The Manimal" Kenneth Faried with 16 points and 16 rebounds, 2 of those points were a dunk clinching the game with 14 seconds left. For the Rockets, the leading scorers were Carlos Delfino with 19 points on 6-14 shooting with 5 rebounds. Patrick Patterson had 18 points and 5 rebounds. James Harden had 15 points on 5-15 shooting. Jeremy Lin only had 5 points but had a career high 6 steals.

Denver, primarily Andre Iguodala, did a good job holding the defending Western Conference Player of the Week to 15 points, which shows us in Red Nation that teams are preparing for James Harden. In both wins in Atlanta and Detroit, they had nobody to hold James Harden. now that the schedule is getting meatier, somebody needs to step up for the Rockets whether it will be Jeremy Lin, Carlos Delfino, Patterson or Morris, somebody needs to step up in case The Beard doesn't have a beard-worthy game. With good defenders like Tony Allen next game with the Grizzlies and, oh, this guy named Lebron James with the Heat next week. It does not get much easier from here, Red Nation. But one of the curses of having a young team is the proverbial "growing pains". This team is still young and still needs to grow up and needs to grow up quickly. They are in the toughest division in the NBA. I just know that through these two losses, I just felt the bandwagon get just a tad bit lighter. And that may be a good thing. People are now saying "Rockets suck" again. That might be, if you're saying that the Rockets are title contenders. But, we'll show you. So, go back to your Laker Gangs and Heat Nation (though I'm a Heat fan, but I'm no bandwagoner, but I digress). The Rox's next game is against the Memphis Grizzlies. The Grizz are the, in my opinion, the "forgotten" team in the division. Besides BeardSanity and the Rockets, You hear about the Spurs, who are always good. You hear about the Mavs, who have a relatively new team as well and the 2011 NBA champions. You hear about the New Orleans Hornets who have an up and coming center in Anthony Davis and a great young player in Austin Rivers. Memphis did little to nothing to their roster in the offseason after getting knocked out by the Clips in the first round last year. Nonetheless, the Rockets have the rebounding machines in Z-Bo and Marc Gasol and the pit bull of a point guard in Mike Conley. This will be a knock down, drag out game. This may be ugly. Hopefully they'll pull it out. As for the state of the team, we may not be title contenders now, but in the future, we will show the naysayers. You'll see.