The Houston Rockets score a lot of points. They are currently second in the league behind the Golden State Warriors, putting up 112.6 points per game. A good chunk of those points come in the first quarter where they average a league-leading 32.4 points while they are curiously last in fourth-quarter points at 22.8.
But as Denver Nuggets head coach Mike Malone points out, there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for why they’re dead-last in fourth quarter scoring: they’re already up by so much that they don’t really need to score late in games.
Malone’s pretty spot on with his assessment. Seven of the Rockets’ last eight wins have come by at least 15 points, which is quite the display of dominance.
Unsurprisingly, James Harden has been a major reason for the Rockets' sizzling hot starts to games. Harden, the league's leader in points (31.6) and assists (9.7), is putting up 10.4 points and 3.9 assists in first quarters, which are both the most in the league as well.
Curiously, Harden’s minutes remain unusually high despite their high frequency of blowouts. However, he’s likely not exerting quite as much effort during the latter stages of games since they’ve already done much of the hard work during the first quarter onwards.
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