The Rockets still can’t close games despite having Kevin Durant

The Houston Rockets coughed up a 25-point lead in their 133-128 overtime loss to the New Orleans Pelicans on Thursday.

“It’s not us, and I hate that it happened like this,” Kevin Durant he said after the game.

Durant is right in one respect; The Rockets haven’t been a team that routinely surrenders huge leads. Thursday was their biggest lead of the season. However, a team that struggles to close out close games is exactly what the Rockets have been all year, even after adding Durant in the offseason for that very reason.

The The Rockets are just 6-7 in what the NBA defines as “clutch.”: contests where the score is within five points in the last two minutes. This gives them the 18th best record in the league in such games.

Houston is also just 1-3 in overtime, dropping both of its overtime games this week. They released it on Monday blew a lead in the final seconds against Denverand on Thursday it slowly unraveled after blowing a 25-point lead.

Thursday was a microcosm of Houston’s problems.

“We were missing our whole identity in the second half,” Durant said after Thursday’s loss. “It’s something we can learn from and get better from. It’s crap to come in here after playing great in the first half and come out and run (away from it). It’s crap.”

Houston was outscored 88-61 after halftime, wasting Durant’s game-high 32 points.

But the problems lie elsewhere. The Rockets committed 20 turnovers, missed three of four free throws in the stretch, Alperen Sengun went just 2 of 6 in the fourth quarter, and the secondary struggled to execute when the Pelicans forced the ball out of Durant’s hands.

Head coach Making Udoka lamented those problems after the loss.

“Offensively, not just the turnovers — we had 11 at halftime and we weren’t much better, we had nine in the second half — but guys looked scared, scared, whatever, out of double teams to play,” Udoka said. “Teams are going to do that with Kevin (Durant) and Alperen (Sengun) and make others beat us. And we couldn’t execute tonight.”

Houston has already struggled in close games against quality opponents0-5 against teams with better records. But losing this way to a 6-22 Pelicans team marked a new low. The late game issues have become so persistent that even New Orleans could take advantage.

While Houston has been great at home, they are just 8-6 on the road, where role players tend to struggle. And when the defense forces the ball out of Durant’s hands, those players struggle even more to make things happen down the stretch.

“We just lost focus,” Sengun said after Thursday’s loss. “A bad loss for us, but we’ll be back.”

The problem is, he’ll be back in Denver on Saturday for a Rockets team that has dropped three of its last four games.

“We just have to regroup,” Durant said. “Everyone individually looks in the mirror. Just see how we can do better in the next game.”