Houston Rockets 111 – San Antonio Spurs 98 (Recap)

The Houston Rockets have played on Christmas Day a total of 7 times with a 3-4 record. Tonight, the opportunity to make it to .500 on Christmas and beat the San Antonio Spurs made it even more worthwhile. After an amazing start the Rockets got a tremendous game from the starters winning 111-98.

The Rockets got off to an incredible start shooting 6-9 from downtown and scoring the second highest amount of points in a quarter this season with 40. Chandler Parsons, the “Rockets Ignitor” came out firing scoring 14 points in the first quarter and finishing with 21 points, 6 dimes, and 6 boards.

The three point shooting was key to giving the Rockets a 40-25 first quarter lead.  Earlier this season the Rockets lead by as much as 25 in San Antonio and the Spurs came back to take the lead, so the Rockets knew the Spurs would bounce back. Houston shot 12-24 from deep, while the Spurs shot 5-20.

One of the best games from the starters resulted in  21 points, 14 boards, and 3 blocks for Terrence Jones, 13 points and 8 dimes for Jeremy Lin. Dwight Howard kept up his amazing play in December by finishing with 15 points and 20 boards. James Harden made his return from injury exploding in the 4th quarter when the Rockets needed him most, finishing with 28 points, 6 dimes, and 6 boards.

The one negative stat was the Rockets are shooting 68% from the free throw line in December going into tonight, and the poor shooting continued finishing with a 9-18 night.

Rockets face the Memphis Grizzlies tomorrow night on TNT.