Rockets Stand on the Brink

The Houston Rockets stand one game from an early off-season, mired in their deepest hole in three years.

Houston has been down 0-2 in the Western Conference playoffs in each of the last two seasons, but each time recovered and eventually won an NBA championship.

No team has been able to extricate itself from a 0-3 hole, which is what the Rockets found themselves in Friday night after Detlef Schrempf and Gary Payton each scored 28 points, and Shawn Kemp got a key dunk and two free throws down the stretch for Seattle in a 115-112 victory in the best-of-seven series.

“None of us in the locker room are going to concede anything,” Rocket Coach Rudy Tomjanovich said. “We left here last year 1-3 against Phoenix, and that’s got to be our battle cry.”

It was the 12th time in a row that the SuperSonics have beaten the Rockets, whose season could end Sunday.

“We just wanted to hang around and hope they got tired and hope they started missing,” said Seattle Coach George Karl, whose team trailed, 29-14, early and didn’t take the lead until the third quarter.

“Things are going our way right now,” Schrempf said. “People say we’ve won 12 in a row against Houston and they have to win one sometime. But hopefully, if they beat us in the next game, we can win it back home.”

Seattle took a 112-105 lead on Schrempf’s two free throws with 52 seconds to play, but Houston made a final surge.

Mario Elie, standing five feet behind the arc, hit a fadeaway three-point shot to cut the SuperSonics’ lead to 113-112 with 11 seconds to play. Payton made two free throws to make it 115-112 with 10 seconds left, and Houston came down with a chance to tie the game with a three-point basket.

But Elie missed a long shot and Seattle ran out the clock.

“We stayed with our game plan and made our free throws down the stretch,” Payton said.

Clyde Drexler led the Rockets with 28 points and Kenny Smith had 27, hitting five of 10 from three-point range. Hakeem Olajuwon had 24 points, 13 rebounds and nine assists for Houston.

Kemp had 21 points and 18 rebounds for the SuperSonics.