The latest NBA game day turned into a marathon for fans: three games at once went beyond regulation and produced four overtimes in total. One night contained a no-mistake comeback by the Rockets, a Dallas revival built around teenage sensation Cooper Flagg, and a wild 58-minute thriller between Utah and Chicago. Let's break down how each of these stories unfolded on the court.
Sengun Opens The Paint As Durant Rewrites Rockets History
Houston hosted Orlando, a team that was already struggling to find its rhythm early in the season and now had also lost its main engine: Paolo Banchero was missing his second game in a row due to injury. In a weakened Eastern Conference, the Magic are drifting in 11th place, with only Washington, Indiana, Egor Demin's Brooklyn and Charlotte sitting below them.
Despite that, it was the visitors who controlled the flow of the game for almost the full 48 minutes. With nine minutes left in the fourth quarter, Orlando was up by +11 and seemed to be cruising towards a logical victory. But the Rockets turned on comeback mode: they went on a 16–4 run, and every single point in that stretch was scored by Kevin Durant and Alperen Sengun.
Wendell Carter Jr. finished a possession with a powerful dunk after a pass from Desmond Bane, pushing the Magic back in front by +3, but Durant immediately erased that advantage with an ice-cold three over Carter to tie it at 100–100. On the next possession, Bane drove to the rim looking for a game-winning layup but ran into Sengun's block. The officials did not immediately determine who the ball went out off of, Houston requested a challenge and won it, earning the right to the final possession with five seconds left on the clock.
However, that opportunity was almost wasted: Durant slipped, Jett Black intercepted the ball, ran the break and scored with a foul, leaving everything to be decided at the free throw line. Fortunately for the Rockets, the bonus shot did not drop. With 1.3 seconds remaining, the hosts called a timeout, Ime Udoka drew up a play that completely cleared out the paint for Sengun, and the Turkish center calmly knocked down a hook over Jonathan Isaac to send the game into overtime.
In the extra five minutes, Houston eventually wore down the depleted Magic to claim a 117–113 win. It was the Rockets' fourth victory in a row and their ninth in the last ten games.
At the same time, 37-year-old Durant is rewriting franchise history: he became the oldest Rockets player ever to record back-to-back 30+ point games and reached the 300-point mark for the season faster than anyone in the club's history.
Cooper Flagg And The New Dallas: This Time The Favorite Doesn't Stumble Over Portland
In another part of the league, yet another overtime appeared exactly where everyone was expecting a clear underdog win. This season, Portland has gained a reputation as a contender-killer, repeatedly pulling the rug out from under top teams. Dallas, on the contrary, has sunk to the bottom of the West, and the organization has been shaking: last week, Mavs owner Patrick Dumont fired general manager Nico Harrison, whose moves are already being called one of the worst trade cases in club history. Even Dirk Nowitzki has not been hiding his disappointment with the current state of the team.
But tonight, for the first time in a long while, Dallas looked like a team with a coherent system. Seven players scored more than 10 points, and 18-year-old first overall pick Cooper Flagg recorded his fourth game with 20+ points – at that age, only LeBron James has more such outings (14). Paradoxically, the teenager has already logged more minutes for the Mavs than Anthony Davis, who arrived back in February. Davis himself showed up at the arena in a Green Bay Packers jersey – a principled NFL rival of Dallas – as if to underline just how detached he is from the local context.
Flagg did more than just score; he put on a full showtime performance – alley-oops, drives through contact, and passes that sliced through the defense. Still, regulation could have ended in Portland's favor: on the decisive possession, Deni Avdija tried to step into Damian Lillard's shoes, but his long game-winning attempt came up short.
In overtime, everything boiled down to two key moments. First, Flagg secured the rebound after a missed three-pointer, quickly read the floor and fired a long outlet pass to P.J. Washington, who finished the fast break with a powerful dunk to put the Mavs up by +3. Shortly after, Daniel Gafford delivered a spectacular block on Shaedon Sharpe and then bullied his way through both Clingan and Kamara in the paint to extend the lead to five.
Portland never recovered from that blow – the final buzzer sounded with the score at 138–133 in Dallas' favor. The atmosphere in the club seems to have cleared up since Nico Harrison's departure: the team is remembering what it feels like to fight rather than simply play out the string.
58 Minutes Of Basketball Thriller: Utah And Chicago Split The Night In Half
The longest story of the evening was written in the game between Utah and Chicago – the teams spent not the standard 48 minutes, and not even 53, but a full 58 minutes on the floor.
The Bulls actually started the season well: four straight wins looked like a solid foundation for a confident beginning. But then came a sharp downturn – heading into the trip to Salt Lake City, Billy Donovan's team was riding a four-game losing streak. Against that backdrop, the comeback of Coby White, returning from a calf injury, became a particularly important event. Initially, the plan was for the guard to play limited minutes and simply ease his way into the season, but he came very close to becoming the main hero of the night.
Utah rookie Ace Bailey clearly had a different debut in mind – the fifth pick in the draft managed to foul out in just ten minutes, effectively removing himself from the end of the game.
White, on the other hand, was delivering a dream performance: 27 points, 8 assists and a string of clutch plays. At the end of the first overtime, Chicago was down by two, the ball belonged to Utah, but Coby forced Keyonte George into a jump ball, won the tip and laid the ball in from under the basket with 0.2 seconds left on the clock, sending the game into a second extra period.
The script was similar in the second overtime: White tied the game again with nine seconds to go, keeping the Bulls alive and giving them hope for a third overtime. But Keyonte George decided that the extended spectacle had gone on long enough. The Utah point guard, who had hit just 2 of 10 shots in the first half, pulled himself together at the key moment, stepped out beyond the arc and buried a game-winning three to seal a 150–147 victory for the Jazz.
It was a historic night for the hosts: for the first time since 1991, a pair of Utah players scored 40 and 30 points in the same game. Lauri Markkanen dropped 47 points against his former team, while George finished with 33, and over the final 6 minutes and 39 seconds of regulation, all 19 of Utah's points were scored by that duo alone.
Another storyline was the return of Josh Giddey. The Australian had missed two games after a painful ankle-breaker from De'Andre Hunter, but tonight he not only stepped back onto the court, he also recorded the 21st triple-double of his career: 26 points, 12 rebounds and 13 assists, drawing level with Kobe Bryant and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in that category. However, he still misfired in the closing moments: with the score tied at 127–127 in regulation, Giddey missed a potential game-winner, grabbed the offensive rebound and then missed again on the second attempt.
A League That Doesn't Know The Phrase "Watch And Go To Sleep"
One game day, three matchups and four overtimes – for the NBA, it's a reminder that the league's drama lives not only in the playoffs. The Rockets, with veteran Durant and rising star Sengun, can pull out a seemingly hopeless finish, Dallas finds a new cornerstone in 18-year-old Cooper Flagg and suddenly starts to look like a functioning machine, while Utah and Chicago turn a routine regular-season fixture into a movie that's hard to switch away from.
Amid endless talk of rebuilds, failed trades and injuries, it's nights like these that remind us why fans are still willing to watch the NBA deep into the night: while some stars are rewriting record books, others are only beginning to build their own collections of overtimes and game-winning shots.
