Due to the ongoing U.S. coronavirus outbreak, there are no Houston Rockets basketball games for the time being. The earliest the NBA could realistically resume its 2019-20 season appears to be mid-April.
The hiatus comes at an odd time in the calendar, since March and April have historically been critical months for NBA teams as they conclude the regular season and battle for playoff positioning.
In the absence of current games, RocketsWire is highlighting a key development on each date throughout Rockets history.
March 13, 2010: Luis Scola scored a career-high 44 points on 20-of-25 shooting (80.0%), and he also grabbed a game-high 12 rebounds as the Rockets defeated the New Jersey Nets, 116-108 (box score).
Scola was guarded for stretches of the game by Brook Lopez, who remains in the NBA in 2020 as the starting center of the Milwaukee Bucks.
“Tonight was one of those nights when everything you try works,” the modest 6-foot-9 power forward said postgame. “And I really don’t have an explanation. I’m as surprised as you are, probably.”
The win improved the Rockets to 33-31, and they finished the 2009-10 regular season at 42-40. But in a loaded Western Conference, that wasn’t nearly enough to make the 2010 playoffs.
Coincidentally, the eighth and final playoff spot that season went to Oklahoma City (50-32), who at the time had James Harden and Russell Westbrook in their first and second NBA seasons, respectively.
As for Scola, in five seasons in Houston from 2007 through 2012, the crafty big man averaged 14.5 points (51.0% shooting) and 7.7 rebounds in 30.2 minutes per game. Scola was perhaps best known for his hard-working role on the beloved 2008-09 Rockets, who pushed the eventual champion Lakers to the brink in the second round of the 2009 playoffs.
Though Houston came up short in Game 7 in Los Angeles after losing star center Yao Ming to a career-altering injury midway through the series, the 2008-09 Rockets were the franchise’s first team to advance beyond the first round of the playoffs in more than a decade.
In December 2016, during what was Scola’s final NBA season, the Rockets played a tribute video recognizing his time in Houston.
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