Dave Hardisty

And to beat good teams, I mean, you've talked about it before.

The superpower for the Rockets is the rebounding.

And Steven is enormously important in that.

But...

you're not going to be able to replace that with Clint Capella, at least not on a super frequent basis.

He can stop up minutes.

But in terms of the high leverage ones against good teams in the second half, you certainly want Shingun to play well, stay out of foul trouble.

But beyond that, I think this might be the point of the schedule that you try Jabari at the five a little bit more.

And to see Jabari get going the way he did tonight,

I think this was a really good mental health game for Jabari and for the team overall.

They're now 25-15, so you're back 10 games over .500, which they hadn't been since midway through the two Portland games.

They are now on pace to win 50-plus games.

Tuesday against the Spurs will be the halfway point of the year, so you'll be on pace either to win 50 or 52.

So it's a nice round number to be at.

And Jabari, the guy who had struggled earlier this month when you went through that downturn, now he comes out on the other side.

So anybody concerned that, you know, he had lost it and was struggling to sort of regain his confidence?

Well, tonight he did that.

And you can point out that the Pelicans aren't a good team.

That's true.

But the teams Jabari struggled against on that road trip, the Mavs, the Blazers, the Kings, they're not good either.