In his first game back after missing seven to rest his sore left knee, McGrady had his season highs for assists (nine) and rebounds (10), and scored 24 points, playing 34 minutes without showing any difficulty with the knee.
Yao Ming and Luis Scola each had 19 points, with Carl Landry adding 18, as the Rockets led all but a few seconds of the game.
This did not quite match their previous meeting with Golden State, largely because when the Rockets built their 22-point fourth-quarter lead, the Warriors rallied back.
Not quite like last week
When the Rockets met the Warriors a week earlier, the Rockets set or matched season bests for points (131), margin of victory (19), points in a first half (62), points in either half (69), assists (23), 3-pointers (13), 3-point shooting percentage (61.9), free throws (36) and free throws attempted (40).
The Warriors got the hint and decided to change things up. They shifted from the double-teams on Yao that worked so poorly in the loss at Toyota Center, to a fronting defense, with Andris Biedrins working to deny Yao the ball. That did not work much better, and when their next plan was to shift to a small, lineup of guards around Biedrins, the defense somehow became even worse.
With Stephen Jackson playing power forward, the Rockets got the ball to Scola let him go to work the way Yao had in the fourth quarter a week before.
Scola scored 10 points in the first 41/2 minutes of the second half, taking the lead to 17. When Rafer Alston swished a 3 from 28 feet out to beat the shot clock, the Rockets had their largest lead at 76-56.
They eventually pushed it to as much as 22, and it seemed that with most of the fourth quarter to go, the Rockets might be tempted to send McGrady and Yao to Los Angeles early. But the Rockets began to coast too early, the Warriors cut the lead to 17, and with eight minutes left, Yao and McGrady were back on the floor.
McGrady scored on a layup. Yao took a pass from Scola for a dunk.
They returned the lead to 20, enough to spend the rest of the game biding time before moving on to the second half of the back-to-back.
The Warriors threw a run at them, cutting the lead to 11, but the Rockets needed only an occasional basket to close out the win.
The Rockets did have other accomplishments to mark the occasion.
They had their planned starting lineup together for the first time this season. Though Ron Artest was out, resting his sprained right ankle, McGrady and Shane Battier were healthy at the same time, giving the Rockets their seventh starting lineup this season.
Playing for the first time since Nov. 24, McGrady got off to a rapid start, hitting his first shot (a 3-pointer) and getting seven points, three rebounds, two assists and a steal in his first eight minutes on the floor, as the Rockets took a 22-15 lead.
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