On Friday, the Houston Rockets secured their first NBA Cup victory of the season, beating the Portland Trail Blazers 140-116. The Rockets were aficionados defensively, forcing 20 turnovers.
Reed Sheppard has continued his string of stellar performances, and was responsible for four of Portland’s turnovers. Rockets standout center Alperen Sengun was remarkable all-around, with a stat line of 25 points (on 9-of-13), 10 rebounds, nine assists, three steals and three blocks.
Sengun was hitting threes at will, to the tune of 4-of-6 from deep.
Again, Sengun did a little bit of everything.
Prior to the game, Sengun took a moment to express his affinity towards Blazers coach Tiago Splitter, who operated as an assistant coach on Rockets coach Ime Udoka’s staff in 2023-24.
He taught me a lot,” Şengün said Friday morning prior to Houston’s beat down over the Trail Blazers. “He’s like a brother. I had a brother-ship with him. I’m excited to play against him. It’s going to be good to see him.”
The star center shared exactly what Splitter helped him with.
“I worked on my left hand with him. We would just sometimes come in and work on the left hand. I used to not go left that much. But now I can go both hands.
Mentally, I would say he helped me alot. Because sometimes we would play Joel Embiid, Nikola Jokic and I would tell him we’re playing tough bigs tonight so I need to lock in and he was saying they need to lock in to guard you.”
Sengun added that he knew that Splitter would become an NBA head coach one day.
He certainly didn’t know that it would be due to these circumstances.
Splitter became Portland’s acting head coach shortly before the season started, due to a gambling and/or sports betting scandal surrounding Chauncey Billups, which rocked their franchise.
Billups was arrested as part of several FBI investigations tied to illegal sports betting and rigged poker games that involved the mafia. Billups will appear in court again on November 24th and was ordered to turn over his passport and limit his travel to just Oregon and Colorado.
Billups is alleged to have used his celebrity status to sway people into playing rigged poker games.
Under Splitter, the Blazers have gotten off to a 6-6 start and currently sit ninth in the Western Conference.
