The Paddock Report: Suns 102, Rockets 99, and our Rockets -7.5 never had a chance to cover

Phoenix 102, Houston 99. For anyone who backed the Rockets laying 7.5, that's a rough one. Houston didn't just fail to cover. It lost outright, which puts the miss roughly 10.5 points away from the number we liked.

Our case rested on efficiency and the glass: Houston's 119.4 offensive efficiency against Phoenix's 113.0, a 43.8 to 38.6 rebounding edge, and a split-adjusted projection near Rockets by nine. Those numbers look fine on paper. What they didn't fully account for was Phoenix at home. The Suns' split of 121.75 for and 121.25 against was the factor we flagged and then, evidently, didn't weigh heavily enough. The projection also leaned on only 7 to 9 games of sample, which is why we labeled this a small play. Small plays can still lose big, and this one did.

The line movement from 6.5 to 7.5, with the moneyline sliding from -230 to -300, looked like the market agreeing with us. Instead, it reflected confidence in a Houston team that came up short on the road in Phoenix.

Our miss comes down to trusting the efficiency edge more than the home-court context that should have tempered it. We don't have a full box score for this breakdown, so we won't pretend to explain every possession. The result stands: Rockets 99, Suns 102, pick missed, and we own it.