Kelly Iko

How y'all doing, brothers?

Miss you too, buddy.

I think yes and no.

If you're in Houston's position at this point, given your team's up and down in terms of consistency, any win at this point, especially going to the break, which is going to be the pivotal evaluation period, is important.

Now, granted, this is a very different Clippers team than the one you faced previously where they were one of the hottest NBA teams coming into the game.

Now everything is going to be channeled into Kawhi.

You can easily put two on the ball and force them to play four on three.

This is a much different looking Clippers team, as you saw tonight.

They're having to look for offense from John Collins.

They have to be more aggressive.

They're trying to incorporate Ben Mathurin, now starting Brooke Lopez, who's a shell of himself.

Frankly, this is not a good Clippers team on paper right now.

So in terms of a measuring stick, I wouldn't say that this game really moves the needle for Houston, but a win is a win in the Western Conference.

So I don't think there'll be any complaints for them after tonight.

I don't think so.

And I think that's one of the biggest, that's one of the telling signs of this team.

I think coming into the year,

if you look at them on paper, there were, I wouldn't call them dreams that were sold, but there was this idea that if Alperen Shingun shot more threes, if Dorian Finney-Smith Jr.

came in off the ankle injury and was an effective floor spacer, then you could kind of see those, the three-point rate go up.

But as you've seen, you know, Alperen, he's more of, he doesn't want to take those threes unless he really has to.