Will The Rockets Stop Aldridge?

The Houston Rockets are having a lot of trouble trying to solve the LaMarcus Aldridge puzzle.

Aldridge opened the playoff series with the Rockets by dropping a franchise-playoff-best 43 points to lead his team to victory. He followed that performance up with a 40-point performance for game two, becoming the only Blazer to ever have back-to-back 40-point post-season games.  The Portland Trail Blazers would win Game 2 as well, giving the underdogs in the series a 2-0 lead over Houston.

Tonight the playoff series heads to Portland where Aldridge and his team will have home court advantage.

Rocket James Harden is even beginning to let his frustration show, calling the series before it is even over.  Here is what he said:

He’s making tough shots, he’s getting to the foul line. He’s offensive rebounding. He’s doing the whole package and it’s tough for us. We gotta figure something out real soon. In game three, it is either we win or it’s over.

-James Harden

It will not be over considering it is a best of seven series. However, Harden’s point is if they do not figure out how to contain Aldridge soon then it is game over for the Rockets.

After Aldridge dominated the paint in Game 1, the Rockets did readjust and successfully kept Aldridge out of the paint.

Unfortunately, Aldirdge just went for the jumper. Thirteen of his 18 field goals came from 10 feet away or more.

Dwight Howard is keeping a more positive outlook on the situation:

We’ve played against Portland in the regular season and we were successful. We just got to play basketball. We can’t look back. We have to stay positive. They won two games but it’s the first to four and we can’t let our heads down. We dug a hole but we can always get out of it.

-Dwight Howard

As positive as he can be, anyway.

While it is true that the Rockets beat the Blazers in the regular season, Portland coming home does not bode well for the Rockets playoff hopes, though. The Blazers only lost ten games at home during the regular season.

Another tidbit of info the Rockets do not want to hear at the moment is only three teams have come back to win after losing the first two games of a seven-game series at home.

Even the bookmakers have began to slant the odds in favor of the Blazers who are now the –3 point favorites according to the spread.

The question of whether the Rockets can stop Aldridge will be answered later tonight at 10:30 p.m. ET.