Rockets’ Bubble Is Burst : Pro basketball: Atlanta ends Houston’s record-tying streak at 15 games and prevents new NBA standard.

The Houston Rockets finally ran out of steam Friday night at the Omni, as their NBA record-tying streak for victories to start a season came crashing to a halt in a 133-111 loss to the red-hot Atlanta Hawks.

The defeat was the first in 16 games this season for the road-weary Rockets, who had beat the Knicks in New York Thursday night to match the record set 45 years ago by the Washington Capitols.

With Hakeem Olajuwon held to 17 points, including three in the second half, the Central Division-leading Hawks won their 10th straight and their eighth at home without a defeat this season under new Coach Lenny Wilkens. Mookie Blaylock led Atlanta with 28 points, and Dominique Wilkins had 27.

“Well, when we bust the bubble, we bust the bubble, don’t we?” said Rocket Coach Rudy Tomjanovich, who pulled all but one of his starters, Vernon Maxwell, at the end of the third quarter. “In 16 games, we’re going to have a night like this. I’m not making excuses. We played a really good team and they kicked our butts in all phases of the game.”

It was virtually over from the start. Behind the hot shooting of Wilkins and Blaylock, the Hawks rode a 66-point first half against the NBA’s best defensive team. Atlanta led by 11 after the first quarter, by 20 at halftime and by as many as 34 in the third quarter.

The defeat ended the Cinderella run by the Rockets, who will finish a torturous trip Sunday against Cleveland. Houston looked like a team playing its second road game in as many nights, a team that hadn’t arrived at its hotel until 4 a.m. Friday because the bus it was taking to the airport got stuck in a tunnel.

Tomjanovich was almost prophetic before the game, or at least a bit fatalistic, when he talked about his team’s recent string that included six of seven away from home. “You have to fight through the problems, the fatigue,” he said. “But that’s part of the NBA.”

And afterward, he said, “We have no excuses because it was a back-to-back situation. We had the same situation to get to this point. We didn’t do the things we needed to do. They’re a very emotional team, a very athletic team and they just ran very well tonight.”

Houston’s obvious fatigue, and Atlanta’s freshness, certainly was a factor. The Hawks exceeded the season’s scoring average of Houston opponents--89 a game--with a little more than two minutes left in the third quarter and became the first team to score more than 100 against the Rockets with more than 10 minutes left in the game.

“Houston is such a good team that what we wanted to do was come out and jump them right away,” said Wilkens, who secured the 880th victory of his 21-year NBA coaching career. “You don’t want a team like that to get life because they have a lot of weapons out there.”

The Rockets never did. Houston saw an early 10-9 lead become a 22-11 deficit late in the first quarter. It grew to 19 early in the second quarter as Blaylock continued to fire up three-pointers. Blaylock capped Atlanta’s highest scoring half this season with a 20-footer at the buzzer.

Things only continued to deteriorate for the Rockets in the second half. Olajuwon didn’t score his first basket of the third quarter until 26.6 seconds remained, after the Hawks had seen their 94-60 lead shrink to 96-69 on a three-point play by the 7-foot center. He took a seat on the bench after the quarter ended and never returned.

“We didn’t play our game, and the Hawks were prepared for us,” said Olajuwon, who was 11 points under his average.