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Cavs head south to take on Houston

Feb 1, 2014 - 3:08 PM (SportsNetwork.com) - The Houston Rockets are back home for two quick games and will host the Cleveland Cavaliers Saturday from the Toyota Center.

The Rockets will also host Phoenix and is 19-7 in Space City this season.

Houston has won two in a row since losing two straight and prevailed for the 10th time in 14 tries with Wednesday's 117-115 victory over their Southwest rival Dallas Mavericks.

Chandler Parsons scored a team-high 26 points to lead seven Houston players in double figures. Dwight Howard, who was selected as a reserve for the Western Conference All-Star team, contributed 21 points and Jeremy Lin, who started in place of James Harden, tallied 18 points with seven rebounds and seven assists for Houston.

"We played last night and they came in and made some tough shots," Rockets head coach Kevin McHale said. "We found a way to win, which is what we needed to do."

Harden is questionable Saturday with a bruised thumb and leads the Rockets with 23.7 ppg this season.

Cleveland will start a two-game tour through Texas against Houston and Dallas, and has lost three in a row and five of its last six games.

In Thursday's 117-86 loss to the New York Knicks in the opener of a three-game road trip, Kyrie Irving scored a team-high 24 points and Dion Waiters added 21 points off the bench for the Cavs.

"Our defense was terrible," Cleveland's Luol Deng admitted. "They executed and we couldn't stop them."

The Cavs once again played without big man Anderson Varejao because of a bruised knee and he is listed as questionable for Saturday. Varejao has 3,990 career points and 3,999 career rebounds. He will soon join Zydrunas Ilgauskas, Brad Daugherty and John Williams as the only players in Cavs history with at least 4,000 points and 4,000 rebounds.

Houston won both meetings with Cleveland a season ago and is unbeaten in the last six matchups between the teams in Space City.