Houston's Totem Showed Its Might

After Yao Ming's Jersey Retirement Ceremony ended, the players from both sides took the court to warm up.

Yao Ming and the other guests who had attended stayed behind, sitting in the front-row seats to cheer on the Rockets.

After the opening ceremony, the starters from both sides took the court one after another.

On the Rockets' side, there were no changes to the starting lineup. Morris remained the starting power forward.

Earlier reports had claimed that Morris had taken 500 Three-point shots every day over the past three days.

It seemed those reports had paid off.

Perhaps because he had spoken with Yao Ming, Cousins looked extremely fired up. At the Tip-off, he got up faster than Davis and tipped the ball back into the Rockets' half.

Paul brought the ball into the frontcourt and organized the offense from the perimeter.

Unlike the previous two games, the Rockets did not open by attacking through Harden. Instead, they put their Offensive Focus on the paint.

After setting a fake screen for Harden, Cousins Rolled down, took Paul's pass, muscled past Jokic, and scored on the layup.

The entire sequence was exceptionally smooth.

In the Pelicans' Set Play, Tang Tian backed down Tucker and hit a fadeaway to put points on the board for the Pelicans as well.

Both teams scored on their first possession.

On the Rockets' next possession, Cousins went back to the same move. This time, though, Davis's Collapse Defense was in place, leaving him with no shooting opportunity.

While being double-teamed, he spun in place and leaned against Davis's body before hooking the ball with his right hand.

Davis reached up and jumped to block it, but Cousins's hook had an extremely high arc.

Swish!

The ball sailed past Davis's fingertips and dropped straight through the net.