Former Rockets excited to return with Sixers: ‘You still get that special feeling being in the city’

HOUSTON — As Danuel House Jr. fired extra shots following 76ers practice Sunday at the Toyota Center, his sons Danuel IV and Brady cheered for their father while drinking milk from plastic containers.

When House took a seat next to them a couple of minutes later, the Sixers wing also coincidentally joined P.J. Tucker, Montrezl Harrell, and De’Anthony Melton to form a courtside line of former Rockets. It served as a reminder that — while it’s fitting that James Harden could make his return from a foot injury in the place where he became a future Hall of Famer — he is not the only Sixer who will have a homecoming during Monday’s game in Houston.

“You still get that special feeling being in the city, playing in this arena,” said Tucker, who was a Rocket for parts of four seasons from 2017-21. “It’s still weird coming in and going to the visitors’ [locker room].”

The Sixers’ only visit to Houston this season is a notable benchmark for a group that drew raised eyebrows when all of them landed in Philly this offseason, in large part because of their ties to Harden and Rockets-turned-Sixers president of basketball operations Daryl Morey. The trip also comes on the heels of Melton’s first game back in Memphis as a Sixer, after which coach Doc Rivers said the fifth-year guard “struggled” while finishing with 13 points on 5-of-13 shooting with six rebounds and four assists.

“It’s hard, because you want to beat that team,” Rivers said of such games. “You want to go at that team. They’re your friends. It’s just a lot of different energies than a normal game. … It will always mean something.”

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Monday’s emotions should be tempered a tad for the former Rockets, because they have all played in Houston before as a visitor. Still, memories flooded back while practicing in their former home arena Sunday afternoon.

Tucker highlighted Harden’s 60-point triple-double in 2018, along with the “daily shenanigans” of a team that played a three-point-heavy style and racked up regular-season wins before falling just short of an NBA championship. House, meanwhile, appreciates that his journeyman career “launched” in his hometown.

“What an impeccable place to blow [up] at,” House said. “… Getting close to winning and stuff like that, it’s pushing my hunger and my drive for my team that I’m on today.”

All of those players were gone by the 2021 trade deadline, when the Rockets abruptly shifted into rebuilding mode. Still, the postgame chatter inside the Sixers’ locker room in Memphis primarily centered on getting to Houston as quickly as possible.

With the extra day between games, House took his kids, who still live in town, to a bounce house. Tucker hit up a couple of his favorite local restaurants.

By Sunday’s practice, however, those players had shifted their attention to using Monday to snap their two-game skid.

“We’ve got a lot of really good memories here,” Harden said. “We had some special moments. Obviously, we’re in Philly trying to create even better moments.”

The Sixers have fallen into double-digit deficits in each of their last three games. Alhough they were able to rally in last Monday’s win against the Atlanta Hawks, they could not overcome it in Wednesday’s blowout loss in Cleveland or Friday’s defeat in Memphis.

Rivers said he did not recognize a common theme that caused those holes. Yet the most important correction, the coach said, is refocusing on transition defense. After cleaning up some early season woes in that area while building one of the NBA’s most efficient overall defenses, the Sixers surrendered 24 fast-break points against the Grizzlies.

“We had a fallback the other night, so it’s fixable,” Rivers said. “We showed on film, our habits had gotten bad. That’s what happens. You have slippage during the season, and you’ve got to keep correcting.”

Entering Sunday, the Sixers ranked 25th in the league in fast-break points allowed (15.7 per game).

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The last Sixer on the floor after practice Sunday was Tobias Harris, who continues to play through a non-COVID-19 illness.

When asked as he came off the floor, Harris said he was feeling “a bit better.” Rivers added that Harris was in good spirits Sunday because “we tried to run a trick play on him, and he actually kind of figured it out.”