Kevin Porter Jr. has had quite the week. The Rockets guard left the arena at halftime after an altercation with an assistant coach in which he reportedly threw something and stormed out, driving home despite there being an entire half of basketball left to play after he and Christian Wood were criticized by their coach for a lack of effort and discipline in front of the entire team.
The two were then suspended for Monday night’s loss to the Sixers in Philly, and for a Rockets team that has been mired in an 8-game losing streak, things seemed to be going off the tracks. However, Porter Jr. and the Rockets team as a whole responded with their best performance in a long time on Wednesday in Washington, where they put an end to their losing streak thanks to some heroics from none other than Porter Jr.
Jalen Green (22 points), Christian Wood (22 points), and Eric Gordon (19 points) did much of the damage over the course of the game for Houston, but Porter Jr. got the biggest bucket of the night on the final possession for Houston, as he got a switch off a screen from Green to get Raul Neto, who he walked down, sized up, and fired a sidestep three just before the buzzer that hit the bottom of the net to give the Rockets a 114-111 win.
KEVIN PORTER JR. FOR THE WIN pic.twitter.com/vyargqGcRa
— NBA TV (@NBATV) January 6, 2022
The Wizards had 0.4 seconds to try and answer, but Kyle Kuzma, who has a pair of game-winners this season, couldn’t get a shot off in time to force overtime and Houston snapped its skid in impressive fashion. Porter Jr. finished with nine points, eight assists, and seven rebounds in the win and the response from he and Wood coming off of their one-game suspension was exactly what the Rockets were hoping to see.