From the corner, James Harden buried his third 3-pointer of the night, one that tied him with Ray Allen for second place on the NBA’s all-time list. The 26-foot pull up shot came late in the opening quarter against the Houston Rockets.
But his long-range shot eluded him for the next three quarters and so did the one shot that would vault him into No. 2 with 2,974 as he went 3 of 9 from 3-point range and 7 of 14 from the field. That achievement could come Sunday when the Clippers return home to face the Utah Jazz.
Catching Stephen Curry, who holds the top spot, isn’t in Harden’s sights. Curry has 3,779 made 3-pointers, an unattainable number for the foreseeable future, a benchmark Harden intends to ignore.
“I’m gonna consider myself No. 1. Steph (Curry) don’t count,” Harden said to Shams Charania of The Athletic earlier this season.
Like Harden, the rest of the Clippers’ offense Friday struggled to generate much firepower against the vastly improved Rockets defense. As a team, the Clippers shot 37.8% from the field and just 25% from long range against Houston, which is holding opponents to 106 points a game, down 7.2 points from the previous season.
Coach Tyronn Lue said Houston disrupted what the Clippers tried to do offensively, most notably getting the ball in the hands of Norman Powell, the team’s hot-shooting guard. The Rockets limited Powell to just eight points on 3-of-11 shots and one 3-pointer.
Powell is averaging 23.6 points a game off 48% shooting from long range.
“They had a good game plan,” Lue told reporters in Houston. “We came in prepared for it, but when it got hard, we just kind of lost our way. We knew they were going to be denying us the basketball, being physical, not letting us get easy catches, trying to keep the ball out of James’ hand and deny him the ball with (Dillon) Brooks.
“They did a good job of it, so we didn’t own our space offensively, getting to our spots, catching the ball the way we wanted to catch it. They made it hard for us.”
Powell said while his team had “spurts” of solid offensive plays, Houston’s defense keyed on he and Harden throughout the 125-104 blowout.
“(We) made some plays, missed some good shots that we generated,” Powell said. “They did a great job, hats (off) to them for zoning in on me and James and making it difficult. They were living with other guys beating (them).”
Kris Dunn scored 13 points, and Kevin Porter Jr. (15), Jordan Miller (11) and Amir Coffey (10) came off the bench and cut the Rockets lead to 102-87 midway through the fourth quarter before Houston pulled away down the stretch.
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“They were physical, they took us out of what we wanted to do,” Powell said.
Said Harden: “We’ll get back to the lab and figure out how to beat that adjustment, especially if teams are going to start doing that.”
The lopsided loss was the Clippers’ (6-7) third in a row, erasing all the feel-good moments of the previous week’s three-game winning streak. Regaining their footing could be difficult this week as they face the Jazz (3-8) in the first of four home games this week and the first of a back-to-back. They play the Golden State Warriors (10-2) on Monday, the Orlando Magic (8-6) on Wednesday and close out the homestand against the Sacramento Kings (7-6).
Utah at Clippers
When: 6 p.m. Sunday
Where: Intuit Dome
TV: FDSNSC