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Utah’s tough defense excelled against almost everyone in the league this season.

The Jazz could not Breeland Speaks Chiefs Jersey , however, find a way to slow down Houston’s high-powered offense.

Utah tied for first in the league in the regular season by allowing just 99.8 points per game, but the Rockets averaged 116.3 points against the Jazz in a 4-0 sweep of the season series.

Now the Jazz will get another shot at the top-seeded Rockets when they open the Western Conference semifinals on Sunday after outdoing the big three of Russell Westbrook, Paul George and Carmelo Anthony to eliminate the Thunder in Game 6 on Friday night.

Utah had no answer for MVP front-runner James Harden in the regular season. He averaged 34.3 points against the Jazz, highlighted by a 56-point performance in a 137-110 win in November that set a career-high he has since bested.

”They’re such a unique team,” Jazz coach Quin Snyder said. ”We have to compete, (that’s) the main thing. … They’re so good. They’ve been the best team in the league all year. They’ve beat us. We know how good they are.”

Despite their success against Utah, the Rockets raved about what the team has done in limiting many of the NBA’s top offenses, with Harden saying they are a ”very, very, very good defensive team.”

The Jazz don’t do anything exotic. Harden said it’s simply good, fundamental basketball.

”They’ve got scrappy defenders and they funnel everything to (Rudy) Gobert,” Harden said. ”A 7-foot-2 guy that’s top-3 in shot-blocking and contesting and making shots tough, so that’s pretty much it.”

Both the Rockets and the fifth-seeded Jazz are in the semifinals for the second straight year. The Rockets, who beat the Timberwolves 4-1 in the first round to advance Braden Smith Youth Jersey , lost to the Spurs last season, and Utah was eliminated by Golden State.

Coach Mike D’Antoni said facing Minnesota’s defense, anchored by Karl-Anthony Towns, was a good warmup for the looks they’ll see against the Jazz and Gobert, a Defensive Player of the Year candidate.

But in the end, the veteran coach believes the Rockets’ success will have more to do with them than anything the Jazz do.

”We’re going to score,” he said of his team, which ranked second in scoring in the regular season. ”To me it depends on us. I just think that we do what we do against anybody and we’re going to score some points if we play well.”

Some things to know about the Jazz-Rockets playoff series:

RUBIO OUT

Jazz starting point guard Ricky Rubio will miss Sunday’s game with a strained left hamstring. Rubio left Friday night’s game against the Thunder in the first quarter with the injury. The team has not said how long he will be out, but Snyder said after Friday’s game he hoped it wasn’t too serious.

”It’s a tough series and it caught up with him a little bit,” Snyder said. ”But hopefully he’ll be all right eventually. We don’t know the timeline.”

Rubio missed a few games late in the season with soreness in the same hamstring, but had not left a game with the problem in the postseason until Friday.

LUC NEARING RETURN

Houston’s Luc Mbah a Moute, who missed the entire first round after dislocating his right shoulder, returned to practice this week and is making significant progress toward a return. D’Antoni said he’s unlikely to play on Sunday, but that there is a chance he could play in Game 2 on Wednesday.

NO REST FOR THE WEARY

While Houston has had a few days to rest after wrapping up its series with Minnesota on Wednesday, the Jazz face a quick turnaround after eliminating Oklahoma City on Friday night. The Rockets were off Thursday Leighton Vander Cowboys Esch Jersey , but went through full practices on Friday and Saturday in preparation for the series. The Jazz did not practice on Saturday and spent the day traveling to Houston.

”We’ll just do what we can to get ready and get out there,” Snyder said. ”Try not to think about being fatigued or anything like that. I don’t think there’s time for that in the playoffs. Get healthy. Try to get our minds right and compete and see where it goes.”

ROOKIE NO MORE

With how Utah’s Donovan Mitchell played in the first round, the Rockets don’t view him as a rookie anymore. The 13th overall pick in the draft out of Louisville scored 38 points in Game 6 to lead the Jazz to the victory.

”Mitchell’s doing things that I don’t think a rookie’s ever done. … (He’s) playing like he’s a 20-year vet,” D’Antoni said.

Houston’s Trevor Ariza, who will spend the most time guarding Mitchell in this series, has seen him grow since the first time he faced him.

”I think he’s definitely gained a lot of confidence,” Ariza said. ”He’s tough. He’s a really good player. You can’t take him lightly.”

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— Indianapolis Colts starting safeties Malik Hooker and Clayton Geathers waited anxiously for months to get back to work.

They agonizingly watched teammates run around as they learned the new defense. They were limited to sideline duty when the practice pace picked up at June’s three-day minicamp. And they were still out when training camp opened.

Now both have returned from knee surgery, eager to show the coaches just what they can do.

“It’s been rough, but I try to get those thoughts out of my head and just keep going and try to help this team win,” Geathers said Friday. “That was my goal coming in as a rookie and then one thing led to another. So I’m just trying to get back and get right.”

While things haven’t gone quite as smoothly as they’d hoped, at least they’ve been activated from the physically unable to perform list. Both are able to participate in position and individual drills and believe they’ll soon be in 11-on-11 team work after a long, circuitous road back.

For Geathers, it’s been one obstacle after another.

He showed promise as a rookie, making two starts and getting 31 tackles after the Colts selected him in the fourth round of the 2015 draft. Chuck Pagano’s staff figured the next NFL prospect from the Geathers’ family tree was perfectly suited as a hybrid safety/linebacker at 6-foot-2, 220 pounds.

Instead Taven Bryan Jaguars Jersey , Geathers missed seven games in 2016 with an assortment of injuries, including a concussion that put him on the season-ending injured reserve list in mid-December.

Then Geathers needed offseason neck surgery, sat out until Week 11 and wound up making eight tackles while playing five of the Colts’ last six games. He spent the offseason again recovering from surgery, this time on his knee.

“I went and got the procedure and one thing led to another and now we are here,” he said. “We are off PUP and now we are back getting acclimated.”

Hooker has a playmaking pedigree.

As a senior at Ohio State, he finished third in FBS with seven interceptions and led the nation by returning three for touchdowns. The Colts liked him so much they couldn’t wait to take him with the No. 15 overall pick in the 2017 draft, prompting then-coach Pagano to draw a quick comparison with one of his former star pupils, Ed Reed.

Indy took a cautious approach with Hooker in training camp as he recovered from shoulder and sports hernia surgeries, but Hooker injured his hamstring at his first practice.

Once he finally got healthy, Hooker performed precisely as the Colts expected. He picked off passes in each of his first three starts, tying Eugene Daniels’ Indianapolis era record for most consecutive games with an interception by a rookie.

But seven games into the season, Hooker tore the anterior cruciate and medial collateral ligaments in his right knee, requiring surgery that kept him off the field until Thursday.

“The ACL injury is a difficult injury to recover from, but I think and the coaching staff thinks that I’m doing a great job of recovering from that and just getting back out there, not thinking twice about cutting Cheap Marcus Davenport Jersey , moving and things like that,” Hooker said.

New coach Frank Reich hasn’t provided a timetable for either to return to full action though the hope is both will be ready for the Sept. 9 season opener against Cincinnati.

Oddly enough, the starting safety duo has yet to work side by side, at practice or in a game, a streak likely to remain intact when the Colts open the preseason Thursday night at Seattle.

Still, the Colts think they have quite the combination.

“Just their physical presence — I’m standing over there and you look over there — I’m just telling you as a quarterback you notice it,” Reich said. “It’s a physical presence. You also know as a quarterback when you are playing a safety who has that knack to have ball production. You know guys like Earl Thomas. When you are a quarterback, you know ‘I can’t make a mistake’ and any little mistake is going to be amplified when you’ve got a playmaker like that (Hooker).”

NOTES: Andrew Luck took another big step during Sunday morning’s practice with a touchdown pass as time ran out in the two-minute drill. Under duress, Luck scrambled to his left and threw the ball 45 yards against his body while on the move. “That’s a tough throw to make, so that’s definitely checking something off,” Reich said. … Left tackle Anthony Castonzo and Denzelle Good, who is competing to start at right tackle, both sat out with hamstring injuries. Reich said Castonzo will miss “some time” after reinjuring the hamstring that initially put him on the non-football injury list. Castonzo was activated Wednesday. He was hurt in Friday night’s practice.
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