Portland, OR – Damian Lillard scored 14 of his 27 points in the final 8:03, rallying the Portland Trail Blazers to another overtime win over the Houston Rockets, this time by a 119-117 decision at the Rose Garden.
The Blazers pulled out a 95-85 overtime victory at the Toyota Center on Nov. 3, and needed to erase a 16-point deficit just to force an extra five minutes on Friday.
"When those guys are hitting shots like that, nobody in the world's going to stop them," the Rockets' Chandler Parsons said of the Blazers' hot shooting down the stretch.
Nicolas Batum was the catalyst for the comeback, finishing with 35 points, while LaMarcus Aldridge added 29 points, including the go-ahead free throw late in OT to give Portland its second straight win coming off a four-game slide.
"For a long stretch of the game it wasn't going how we wanted it, but when it mattered, we played pretty well," Portland head coach Terry Stotts said.
James Harden logged 29 points to pace the Rockets, losers in five of their last seven games. Omer Asik added 16 points and 16 rebounds before fouling out, while Jeremy Lin logged 11 points, 11 assists and six boards in defeat.
A breakneck fourth quarter featured a combined 65 points, eight 3-pointers and plenty of clutch shots, particularly from Houston's Marcus Morris and Lillard, who each netted 11 points in the frame.
The Rockets held a 105-100 lead before Lillard scored seven straight points, the last two coming from the foul line with 1:37 remaining. Harden, who turned the ball over on the previous possession, answered with a 3-pointer from the right wing before Lillard took Lin to the hole on back-to-back possessions.
First he drove left and finished with his right hand, and after Batum blocked Asik at the rim, the Weber State product pulled up from nine feet and hit one with a hand in his face for a 111-108 lead with 17.9 seconds to go.
After a timeout, Morris fired from five feet behind the arc and drained the tying 3-pointer with 10.9 ticks showing. On the final touch of regulation, the Rockets put Toney Douglas on Lillard, who was forced into an off-balanced 3- point try that hit iron as time expired.
Asik committed his sixth foul with 1:21 remaining in the extra session. Aldridge hit 1-of-2 from the foul line for a 117-116 edge, and Harden lost the ball out of bounds at the other end.
Aldridge added a turnaround jumper for a three-point lead, and Batum blocked a driving Harden out of bounds. After the Rockets called a timeout with 29.4 seconds left, Douglas missed a wide open 3-point attempt in the corner with the shot clock winding down. Harden grabbed the offensive rebound and was fouled with 1.4 seconds on the clock. He missed the first attempt before intentionally missing the second, and time ran out before Houston got another shot off.
Parsons, who also recorded a double-double with 19 points and 11 rebounds, scored eight points in the first quarter, including two on a late alley-oop slam from Harden that gave the Rockets a 27-22 lead.
Houston led by as many as 16 in the second quarter by making 11 of their first 16 shots, but Portland scored the final eight points of the half to pull within 58-51 at intermission.
A Patrick Patterson putback pushed the Rockets' margin to 72-57 before the Blazers began chipping away midway through the third. Batum then scored Portland's first 10 points during a 14-2 run over the final 4 1/2 minutes.
The flurry cut the deficit to 79-78, and Wesley Matthews' layup on the first possession of the fourth gave Portland its first lead of the second half.
Game Notes
The Rockets fell to 2-2 under interim coach Kelvin Sampson, who is still at the helm as head coach Kevin McHale deals with a personal matter ... The Rockets scored 18 more points in the paint (50-32) and had 13 more fastbreak points (24-11) ... Morris netted 16 points, while Matthews and Patterson each had 15 ... Houston had won three straight at the Rose Garden.
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