This Time Fitch Likes What He Sees as Clippers Win at Houston

HOUSTON — The last time the Clippers beat the Rockets here, Ronald Reagan was in the White House and Bill Fitch was coaching the Rockets.

Fitch now coaches the Clippers, who ended a 20-game losing streak in Houston with a 95-91 victory over the two-time NBA champion Rockets on Saturday night before a sellout crowd of 16,285 at the Summit.

“This was a great win,” Fitch said. “We didn’t always play great, but we played hard.”

It was the first time the Clippers have won here since Nov. 6, 1986, when they surprised the Rockets, 104-97, to even their record at 3-3. They won only nine more games the rest of the season and finished a franchise-worst 12-70.

Trailing, 93-91, the Rockets, who scored only 12 points in the fourth quarter, missed four shots in the final seconds.

Clyde Drexler missed a three-pointer with nine seconds to play, Hakeem Olajuwon missed a tip-in with 6.4 seconds left, Charles Barkley missed a tip-in with 3.9 seconds left and Olajuwon missed a 16-foot jump shot from the corner with 2.2 seconds remaining.

“I can’t believe I missed that tip,” Barkley said. “Clyde got a runner and [Olajuwon] got a decent shot from the corner. We got some good shots, they just didn’t go in.”

Fitch said the Clippers didn’t double team the Rockets on the final possession because they didn’t want to leave anyone open.

Olajuwon, who had 25 points and 10 rebounds, made only four of 22 shots in the fourth quarter.

“This should be a wakeup call for us,” he said. “If we want to win the league, we have to play from beginning to end.”

Barkley had 23 points and 13 rebounds but had only three points and five rebounds in the second half.

“We don’t make excuses, we stunk out there, it’s that simple,” he said. “We didn’t do anything well. We shot poorly, we passed poorly and we didn’t play defense.”

The Clippers, who had lost five consecutive games, have recorded back-to-back wins over two of the NBA’s best teams, the Utah Jazz and the Rockets.

“We feel real confident right now and we’ve gotten that way from beating the upper echelon teams,” said forward Loy Vaught, who scored 20 points, 11 in the fourth quarter. Guard Darrick Martin, who scored a career-high 38 points as the Clippers’ defeated the Jazz, 115-101, last Monday, had 20 points and eight assists.

With the score tied, 91-91, after Clipper forward Rodney Rogers made a three-point shot with 1:46 to play, Martin made two free throws after he was fouled by Olajuwon on a drive to the basket with 1:16 left as the Clippers ended the game with a 7-0 spurt.

Martin has played well since filling in for Pooh Richardson, sidelined because of an ankle injury suffered two weeks ago.

Rookie center Lorenzen Wright did a good job of checking Olajuwon, limiting him to nine points and six rebounds in the second half as the Clippers outscored the Rockets, 42-34.

“I can’t think of a better school to go to than the school of Olajuwon,” Fitch said. “If he played 12 games against Olajuwon like that, they wouldn’t call him rookie any more.”