Rockets visit Dallas at 5-0 after beating the Bucks

Five games, five wins

Houston moved to 5-0 with a 132-100 win at Milwaukee on Wednesday night, and the margin was built before halftime. The Rockets led 57-35 at the break after outscoring the Bucks 34-14 in the second quarter, then kept the game at arm's length through the third. Milwaukee fell to 1-4.

The result came without the team's leading scorer. Alperen Sengun, averaging 24.5 points per game, sat out with low back soreness, and center Steven Adams missed the game with a right calf strain. Houston also remained without Marcus Smart, who has a left forearm strain and has now missed three straight games.

The Bucks' 1-4 start runs in the other direction. Milwaukee shot 4 of 24 from three in the first half and made one first-half free throw, and Houston's 54.8% shooting night came against a defense that could not keep the ball out of the paint. The margin is real, and part of it belongs to how poorly Milwaukee played rather than only to how well Houston did.

VanVleet's 15 straight points broke the game open

Fred VanVleet scored 24 points on 7-of-14 shooting, including 4 of 9 from three-point range, and the timing mattered more than the total. Midway through the third quarter he scored 15 consecutive Houston points, a run that included three free throws and put the Rockets ahead 81-61.

That stretch is the clearest evidence that VanVleet is past the injury that cost him all of last season. He tore an ACL and missed all of last season; a 15-point run inside a single quarter is a different kind of test than a shooting line. One game does not establish that he is back to his previous level, but it is the kind of stretch a team needs from a starting guard when its leading scorer is out.

Thompson and the rest of the rotation carried the load

Amen Thompson scored 23 points on 10-of-16 shooting, and Kevin Durant added 18. Bogdan Bogdanovic scored 16 points in 15 minutes off the bench. Houston shot 54.8% as a team and made 23 of 26 free throws, a rate that explains part of the margin without requiring a hot shooting night from distance.

The distribution matters because it answers the obvious question about a team missing its top scorer and a starting center. The Rockets did not replace Sengun's 24.5 points with one player; they spread the attempts and got efficient nights from three different scorers. That is a smaller-sample observation than a season-long trend, but it is what the box score shows.

The second quarter decided it

Houston scored the first eight points of the second quarter to go ahead 31-21, and Clint Capela's tip-in pushed the lead to 49-30. The Bucks never found a counter in that stretch. Milwaukee made just 4 of 24 three-point attempts in the first half and attempted a single free throw before halftime, while Houston went 13 of 15 from the line in the same period.

That combination is hard to overcome: a team missing 20 threes and not getting to the line cannot keep pace with a team shooting over 50% and converting free throws. The 34-14 quarter was not a shooting fluke on one side; it was a gap in how each team generated points.

What a 5-0 start can and cannot show

Five games is a small sample, and the schedule matters. Houston's start is real in the standings, but a 5-0 record in late October says more about health and shot-making over a week than about how the team will look in January. The relevant question is whether the Rockets can keep winning when Sengun and Adams return and the rotation changes again.

The West context makes the start more interesting. Oklahoma City, the team many expected to set the pace, lost two starters to serious injuries in the opening week, which opens room at the top of the conference. Our look at another West opener covers one of those early matchups, and the national viewing guide lists where Houston's games appear this season.

There is a scheduling detail worth keeping alongside the record. Houston's five wins include a game without its two centers, and the free-throw margin of 23 of 26 suggests a team that kept attacking the paint rather than settling for threes. That is the difference between winning because the best player carried the team and winning while the best player watched, and the second is the more useful signal in late October.

Dallas on Friday, and a Cup opener

Houston visits Dallas on Friday in NBA Cup play, which is the next test of a rotation that is still missing two big men. The Cup games count in the regular-season standings as well as the tournament, so the result will affect both. Our NBA Cup schedule explainer sets out how the December dates work.

For now the Rockets have the record and the margin. The caution is built into the calendar: five wins in October are worth having, and they are not yet evidence of what the team is. The next month, with Sengun and Adams back and the schedule tightening, will say more than the first week did. The margin and the absences are the two facts worth carrying into Friday.