With the streak in its dying breaths with most of the fourth quarter still to play, the Toyota Center crowd stood and roared one final time, not in celebration of the night, but in appreciation of so many nights strung together for so long.
The Rockets’ run had run dry. The NBA’s hottest team ran into the league’s best team. The winning streak, stretching 22 games long and longer than all but one in NBA history, was demolished by the Boston Celtics’ 94-74 rout Tuesday night, before 18,525 at Toyota Center, the largest home crowd in Rockets history.
More Top Picks Best Ceramic Cat Water Fountains
“All good things much come to an end,” Rockets guard Tracy McGrady said. “It’s not disappointing. That’s a heck of a team over there. They outplayed us. I’ve never seen defense like that. If they play defense like that night in, night out, the NBA is in trouble. That was defense at its finest.
“It was a great run. The team went out and laid everything out on the basketball court night in, night out. We’re in the history books. But we don’t want to look back on it. We want to start another streak.”
The Rockets have considered theirs among the league’s best defenses, and for most of the previous 22 games, it had been. Then the Celtics’ defense took the Rockets apart.
It held McGrady to eight points, forced 17 turnovers and held the Rockets to their fewest points in a game and a second half (34) this season, with the Rockets seeming to crash not only when running into the teeth of the Boston defense, but under the weight of the streak and the burden to keep it alive for another day.
“I wondered if we ran into a wall there,” Rockets coach Rick Adelman said. “They put their will upon us. Maybe it just all … We just kind of got deflated there and didn’t have a response.
“It’s been a long time we’ve been on this winning streak. We did a lot of good things we learned from. When you have a loss like this, you learn from that too. We got a lot of lessons tonight.
“We’ve got a one-game losing streak. That’s how you approach it. Sure, it was great. We rode it a long time.”
The Celtics dominated from the opening seconds of the second half to the last.
After the Rockets battled through such tests and adversity for so long, when the streak and all they had done so well finally cracked and then splintered, it all collapsed at once.
The Rockets lost their shooting touch, defensive toughness and a bit of their long-unshakable poise, as the Celtics dominated the third quarter to take a game that had been tied 40-40 at the half, and outscored the Rockets 32-16 in the third quarter.
“We didn’t fight out there in the second half,” said Rafer Alston, who was held to three second-half points. “They had all the fight. They hustled. They had the will. And they wanted it more in the second half and it showed.”
Boston All-Stars Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce combined for 42 points, capped by the nastiest of Garnett slams with two minutes left.
By then, most of the Toyota Center had emptied, with few left to do more than offer polite applause, with 48 minutes having ended the run of the previous 48 days.
“It’s not too often you can be a part of a 22-game winning streak,” Shane Battier said. “It was a great run. We played great basketball.”
Then they didn’t, and the streak was over.