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HOUSTON -- Terrence Jones said he is feeling more comfortable and confident on the floor. Cheap Jerseys From China . It has showed the last two games. Jones scored a career-high 24 points and grabbed nine rebounds to lead the Houston Rockets to their third straight victory, 109-85 over the Boston Celtics on Tuesday night. Jones, who tied his previous career high with 14 points Saturday against Denver, was 10 of 12 from the field as the Rockets shot 57 per cent as a team, including 72 per cent in the first half in building a 24-point halftime lead. "Im just trying to make the simple plays and trying to be there for cuts and offensive rebounds," said Jones, who has started the last four games. "Im just trying to do all the things to help us win." Patrick Beverley chipped in 16 points, James Harden added 15 points, five rebounds and five assists, and Dwight Howard had 10 points and 11 rebounds. Jeremy Lin and Chandler Parsons each had 11 points as the Rockets raced out to a 17-point, first-quarter lead and were never threatened. Houston also never trailed in its 122-111 victory over Denver and has not trailed since falling behind New York 61-60 with 7:41 remaining in the third quarter Thursday, a span of 112 minutes, 19 seconds. Houston coach Kevin McHale said he hoped his team was catching a rhythm. "I think the guys have done a really good job of being attentive and making corrections," McHale said. "Weve still got a long way to go, but were getting better all the time. Thats the encouraging thing. We have a lot of room for improvement still, but I can feel us starting to jell a little bit." Courtney Lee had 17 points, Avery Bradley added 11 and Jared Sullinger had 10 points and nine rebounds off the bench for Boston, which lost its fourth in a row. The Celtics shot 32 per cent. Boston coach Brad Stevens said he didnt have anything he was excited about from Tuesdays game. "I want to make sure we dont play like that again, so I never look at it as it was just one of those things because there is something behind when you dont play the way youre supposed to," Stevens said. "There are games where things just dont go your way, but were letting one end affect the other, and you dont do that against good teams." The Rockets jumped out to an 18-1 lead in the first 5 minutes, capped by a follow dunk by Jones, who had six in the game-opening run. Beverley had five points in the stretch for Houston. Howard pointed to Houstons defence as the reason the Rockets ran out to the big lead. "Terrence and myself tried to do a better job of protecting the paint and forcing teams to only get one shot," Howard said. "Once we do that, our young guys can get out and run. They did a good job of that tonight, of getting out and running early. We set the tone. Thats what we have to do." Boston got its first point of the game on Jordan Crawfords free throw 45 seconds in after a Houston defensive 3-second call, but the Celtics missed their first nine shots and had three turnovers before Bradley hit a jumper with 6:46 left in the first to cut the lead to 18-3. "It was a slow start," Lee said. "We werent making shots, and were not executing our offence, and Houston got out and were running and were making easy layups, and everything they were running was working against us. It was definitely a bad start for us." Boston, which shot 24 per cent in the first quarter, cut the lead to 28-18 on Sullingers layup with 2:28 left in the period. However, Houston, which shot 80 per cent in the first quarter, responded by ending the quarter on a 12-0 run capped by Omri Casspis 3-pointer to lead 40-18 after one. Houston pushed the lead to 43-18 on a 3-pointer by Beverley a minute into the second quarter and Boston never got the lead below 18 the rest of the way. The Rockets led 68-44 at the half and stretched the lead to 35 at 88-53 on Howards follow shot with 4 minutes to go in the third. NOTES: Houston C Omer Asik, who has been the subject of trade rumours, played Tuesday after missing the last two games. "I was just frustrated," Asik said at Tuesday mornings shootaround about missing the previous two games. "It is behind me now. Im looking forward to help my team win." Asik would not discuss reports that he asked to be traded. ... High school senior Carly Wright, who has been diagnosed with osteosarcoma, a form of bone cancer, was granted a wish by the Rockets and the Make-A-Wish program as she attended shootaround and the game and met the team, including her favourite player, Parsons. Wholesale Jerseys . But the left-hander knows that getting to this point -- nearly two years removed from shoulder surgery -- was anything but easy. Cheap Jerseys . Greg Chase and Kenton Helgesen also scored for the Hitmen (18-7-4), who extended their win streak to five games, while Brady Brassart chipped in with two assists.Sochi, Russia - The closing ceremony of the Sochi Games brought a flashy and tuneful end Sunday night to the most expensive Olympics in history. Most important, perhaps, it went off without a hitch. Organizers poked a little fun at the now-infamous opening ceremony gaffe that saw only four out of five snowflakes open up into rings, leaving the Olympics logo one ring short. They opted for human rings this time, the last one opening several seconds after the first four on the floor of the stadium. It echoed the hijinks from Vancouvers closing ceremony four years ago, when a leg of the cauldron that failed to come up during the opening ceremony was finally raised into place. Sundays ceremony at Fisht Olympic Stadium included a handoff from Sochi to Pyeongchang, South Korea, host of the 2018 Winter Games. Near the end, the cauldron that was lit 16 days earlier by Russian Olympic greats Vladislav Tretiak and Irina Rodnina was extinguished after one of the games mascots, an animatronic bear, blew out a flame in the center of the stadium, a single tear dripping from its left eye. Earlier, after a childrens choir conducted by Valery Gergiev sung the Russian national anthem, flag bearers for each country entered the stadium together rather than country by country like in the opening ceremony. The athletes who stuck around for the festivities also came in together, as is customary for the closing ceremony. American ice hockey forward Julie Chu, who competed in her fourth Olympics, carried the U.S. flag. "So proud to represent Team USA (and) our amazing athletes. Humbled," Chu tweeted as she waited to enter the stadium. Kaillie Humphries and Heather Moyse, who won their second womens bobsled gold medal in a row, were co-flag bearers for Canada. Figure skater Maxim Trankov, a dual gold medalist in Sochi, carried Russias flag. Pop music played, but the ceremony also included a heavy dose of classical music and ballet like the opening ceremony, and a nod to Russian novelists and poets. All of it was done as temperatures hovered in the 40s, a cool close to the so- called Spring Olympics, where the weather was famously mild, with temperatures even climbing into the 60s on some days. That led to some strange scenes, including cross country skiers cutting the sleeves off their uniforms and American skier Julia Mancuso filming a surfing video for NBC on the Black Sea. There was a serious side to the warmer weather, of course, which wreaked havoc on some courses for the snow events. Snowboarders complained about slushy conditions on the halfpipe and the New York Times detailed a clandestine operation by organizers to purchase more salt needed to keep some courses properly iced. Norwegian biathlete Ole Einar Bjoerndalen set the all-time Winter Olympics record during the games by winning his 12th and 13th medals, both golds. But Russia led the overall medal count with 33, including 13 gold medals to fall one short of the Winter Games record of 14 set by Canada four years ago at the Vancouver Olympics. The U.S. finished second with 28 medals, nine fewer than the Winter Games record 37 they captured in Vancouver. Norway was third overall with 26 medals and Canada won 25, including 10 gold -- the last secured by the mens hockey team on Sunday in a win over Sweden. Cheap NFL Jerseys. . The Russian anthem played for the last time at the closing ceremony during the medal ceremony for the mens 50-kilometer cross country race. Alexander Legkov led a Russian medal sweep of that event Sunday morning. Sochi organizing committee head Dmitry Chernyshenko called the games "a great moment in our history ... a moment that will never be forgotten." "This is the new face of Russia, our Russia," he said. "And for us, these games are the best ever." Russian President Vladimir Putins $51 billion Olympics were the subject of snickers early on when media and athletes arrived to find some accommodations lacking. Journalists relayed stories of unfinished rooms, broken door handles, missing shower curtains and even stray dogs in their media villages. One was told not to use the water in her bathroom, which was said to contain a dangerous chemical. U.S. bobsledder Johnny Quinn became an Internet sensation after tweeting a picture of his bathroom door, which he had broken through after becoming locked inside. The Twitter account SochiProblems had more than 330,000 followers by the time of Sundays closing ceremony, but the criticism so prevalent in the first days died down, giving way to wide praise of Sochis venues. IOC President Thomas Bach, presiding over his first games, said the athletes left a legacy of "peace, tolerance and respect" and urged, as IOC heads often do, that countries around the world follow the example. Bach thanked Putin for what he said was the Russian presidents "personal commitment to the extraordinary success" of the games. "We leave as friends of the Russian people," said Bach. News broke during the opening ceremony that a plane had been diverted to an airport in Turkey after a passenger on board allegedly issued a bomb threat and tried to have the aircraft redirected to Sochi. The incident further raised fears that Russias first Olympics in 34 years could be the target of a terrorist attack, but the games passed without any such incident. The host country faced criticism in the run-up to the games after passing laws last year aimed at keeping gay "propaganda" away from children, and officials remained adamant throughout that political protests should be kept away from Olympic venues. In the highest-profile incident of its kind, two members of the punk band Pussy Riot were among several people detained for several hours as they planned to film a protest video in Sochi. They set up a day later to film again, but were interrupted by Cossacks who attacked them with whips. The games went without a positive doping test until the final weekend, when there were six. In the last case, Swedish hockey star Nicklas Backstrom was scratched from the gold medal game Sunday after testing positive for a banned substance found in allergy medication his NHL team said he has been taking for seven years to combat severe allergies. The Washington Capitals said the medication was approved by the Swedish national team. cheap jerseys from china cheap jerseys ' ' '