Durant joined the Rockets in July<\/a> in a blockbuster trade that sent Jalen Green and Dillon Brooks to Phoenix. The 15-time All-Star and four-time Olympic gold medalist joins a young team that aims to take another step this season after finishing second in the Western Conference in the regular season before losing in the first round of the playoffs.<\/p>\n\u201cJust took what the game gave him, wasn\u2019t forcing anything, trying to get guys involved, took the shots that were there,\u201d coach Ime Udoka said. \u201cEnded up 7 for 10 and missed the three that he probably will make usually and so did what he does.<\/p>\n
“Just getting his rhythm going, so it\u2019s good to see him out there.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 6-foot-11 Durant was part of a starting lineup Wednesday night that included fellow 6-11 player Alperen Sengun and 6-10 Jabari Smith Jr. He loved the defensive looks they got when Sengun was handling the ball on the perimeter.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you\u2019ve got your 5 man that can handle at the top of the key the spacing just opens the floor up so much for us and then makes us unpredictable because he can iso up there, he can go set the screen, dribble hand off, we can screen for him,\u201d Durant said. \u201cSo, it throws the defense off when he has the ball up there and we trust he\u2019s gonna make the right play every time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sengun had 13 points and 13 assists in 27 minutes as the Rockets look for different facilitators in their offense with point guard Fred VanVleet out for the season after tearing his ACL.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t know he had that many assists,\u201d Amen Thompson said. \u201cHe just brings so much that he commands so much attention that it just gives us easy buckets.\u201d<\/p>\n
Thompson, who had 19 points, seven rebounds and six assists, was thrilled to see his first game action with Durant.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was fun,\u201d he said. \u201cJust having him as a release valve \u2014 every time I want an assist, I just throw it to him.\u201d<\/p>\n
AP NBA: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/NBA<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kevin Durant missed his first three shots Wednesday night in his first action as a Houston Rocket. He…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":211081,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[355,99],"class_list":["post-211080","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211080","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=211080"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211080\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/211081"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=211080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=211080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=211080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}