Kevin Durant fed Alperen Şengün for a 4-foot floater on Houston’s final possession, and the Rockets beat the Golden State Warriors 117-116 on Sunday night in San Francisco. The win gave Houston its sixth straight victory and kept alive a passing run that has become one of the clearest signs of how the team has changed.
The Rockets finished with exactly 30 assists after the NBA updated the box score, making it six straight games with at least 30. Houston is now one game away from tying its longest such streak in franchise history, set in 1979, and the current run is tied for the club’s longest since 1986. The Rockets entered the night with a 49-29 record and, with the start of the playoffs less than two weeks away, they are building momentum at the right time.
Golden State made the game feel far less settled than Houston would have liked. Stephen Curry returned after a 27-game absence and helped the Warriors erase a 14-point deficit. Curry briefly put Golden State ahead by one with 19.6 seconds left, only for Houston to answer on the final trip. Durant, who had spent much of the season working in Houston’s half-court isolation game alongside Şengün, delivered the decisive pass.
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That finish mattered because the Rockets had been wobbling in late-game situations only weeks ago. They lost to the Los Angeles Lakers on March 16 and the Minnesota Timberwolves on March 25 while still struggling to close. On Sunday, they missed a chance to put the game away when Amen Thompson blew a wide-open alley-oop layup with less than seven minutes left in the fourth quarter, but they still recovered and executed when it counted most.
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Houston’s offense has looked different since then. The coaching staff tweaked the system, putting more emphasis on off-ball movement and spacing. Şengün said the team has been moving the ball more and using flash actions to involve everyone, adding that the ball is touching everybody’s hands. He said Houston is already a good defensive team and that solving the offensive problems could make it a really great one. For most of the season, the Rockets were known for slower half-court play and a heavy reliance on Durant and Şengün in isolation. That is no longer the whole story. The six-game winning streak has all come with 30 or more assists, and the improved offense has matched the team’s best stretch of the season. Durant said these past couple of weeks had shown a solid brand of ball, and he liked how Houston weathered the storm and stayed poised enough to make the biggest plays down the stretch. That is the formula the Rockets will carry into the final stretch before the postseason.
