The Golden State Warriors did something over the last three days that I didn’t think was possible: They won the first two games of their Western Conference Final series against Houston without giving their fans any confidence whatsoever that they will win the series.
Okay, maybe that’s a little strong, but if the 19,000 maniacs in Oracle Arena Thursday night were paying attention, they saw a team that has immense difficulty holding leads… at home.
In Game 1 they led by 11 with two minutes to play and had to hit free throws to win by four. In Game 2 they led by seven points with 1:20 to go and watched Houston score six and have the ball in James Harden’s hands with a chance to win.
The Rockets did not accomplish their goal of at least a split in the series, but they did not come away empty-handed. After both games their locker room was full of resolve, buoyed by the palpable feeling that they could beat Golden State if they just made a play here or a play there.
It says something about these Rockets that, having now lost six straight to the Warriors, they feel such confidence. Yet, you can’t say it’s misplaced. They fought back from deficits in both games, and withstood the withering runs that have sent most Warriors’ opponents to lopsided defeats in games decided well before the final six minutes. They’ve put their superstar — James Harden — up against the Warriors’ superstar, Steph Curry, and you’d have to call that a draw so far.
The Rockets just haven’t been able to win a game, but that’s not the end of the world at this point. Sage sports opnionators are fond of saying, “a series doesn’t start until someone wins on the road.” I look at it differently. I think a series starts when the underdog wins on the road. The higher-seeded team winning at home is not an event. It’s what that team is supposed to do. The idea is to do it with enough of a margin that you put some doubt in the opponents’ mind about their ability to beat you at home.
The Rockets have no such doubt at this point.
You can almost sense that they’re mentally getting ready for Game 5 back in Oakland, having already won Games 3 and 4 in their minds.
Here are two of the factors that support their thinking:
* James Harden. My goodness. After Game 1, the Warriors said all the right things: “We played good defense on him, he just made tough shots.” Well, what do you say after Game 2? He made tougher shots! Now the Warriors must be thinking, “How long can he do this?”
* Dwight Howard. The Rockets’ big man’s knee was the story for two straight days, and either Kevin McHale was just playing everybody, or he didn’t know until 30 minutes before Game 2 that Howard was going to give it a go. After a Game 1 where the Warriors’ small lineup was the big story, Game 2 featured a more typical brand of NBA playoff basketball. Howard had 19 points and 17 rebounds, and you could see how much he inspired his teammates.
The history majors have already weighed in – 94% of the NBA teams who have won the first two games of a playoff series go on to win the series. Why should we even bother? Let’s ask Charles Barkley the next time we see him!
Barkley’s Phoenix Suns blew 2-0 leads IN BACK TO BACK YEARS in the Western Conference semifinals. Who beat them? The Houston Rockets. Suns fans still have brain damage from those two seasons. Oh, and the Rockets went on to win the championship in both of those years.
So, you ask, has it happened more recently? Uh, yeah, it happened in 2012. Oklahoma City did it to San Antonio. Lost the first two, won the next four. Some guy named Harden was on that team.
That’s one of my pet peeves in sports. Most people look at the situation the Rockets are in and say, “Now they need to win four out of five,” as if that couldn’t possibly happen. The truth is, they just need to win Game 3. That gives them momentum. Then they need to win Game 4. Then they come back to Oakland, where there will be tremendous pressure on the Warriors in Game 5. If Houston were to win that game, they could close it out at home in Game 6. They can’t win four games at once. They just need to win one. Let’s not forget this is the group that was down 3-1 at one point, and 19 points in the third quarter of Game 6 of its previous series. Tell the Rockets what they can’t do and they laugh at you.
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More notes from Game 2:
Klay Thompson is now 2-14 from 3-point range in the series. He’s 10-19 on 2-pointers. I realize that he needs to hit a three-pointer now and then for floor spacing, but he might want to cut down those attempts for now. There’s no doubt that guarding Harden most of the night has to be taking a lot out of him, and 3-point shooting is the first place fatigue shows up.
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There was quite a bit of chatter on Twitter (what do we call that, chwatter?) about things that the Warriors should do to try to stop Harden. Using Andre Iguodala and Harrison Barnes instead of Thompson were two popular ideas. One of the rationales was that Thompson’s offensive efficiency would probably increase if he wasn’t chasing Harden around all night.
My take is that the Warriors have plenty of people who can score. They don’t have anyone who is as effective against Harden, or at least, they don’t think they do. They feel that Thompson is the best way to keep Harden from going for 50 points, and they might be right. I do think they’ve won 77 games and lost 17 this season, so I think this coaching staff has earned the right to figure it out without Twitter’s help.
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It looks like I was not the only person to notice how comfortable Draymond Green was on the ESPN desk after Game 1. Two-thirds of the way through SportsCenter, this is what we saw on TV:
This was after a game in which, for only the second time in 12 playoff games, Green had a negative +/- number. The ESPN guys busted him on it (“Hey, Draymond, what’s that -10 on the stat sheet by your name?”), and Green completely owned it. He thanked his teammates for picking him up.
Green’s main contribution on that ESPN panel: He gave great insight on the final sequence, including a fact that I didn’t hear in any other piece of analysis from Game 2. There was lots of discussion about whether or not Kevin McHale should have called a timeout, but McHale said he didn’t because he knew Barnes was out of the play and he liked Harden’s chances with a 4-on-3. Green told his new friends on the ESPN desk that Terrence Jones was open for a layup had Harden seen him, and that Green was hustling down the floor to commit a foul if the Rockets made that pass. That confirms McHale’s decision to not call the timeout, and gives the Rockets one more reason to feel that they were even closer to winning that game than it looked.
I know this sounds a little “doom-and-gloom” for the Warriors, and I’m not saying they’re in trouble, necessarily. As we learned last round, a series has an arc of its own, and two wins do not guarantee two more. Steve Kerr and his staff are brilliant, in my opinion, and I think they will make an adjustment of some sort to keep the ball out of Harden’s hands, rather than just ask Klay to “D him up” and hope he stops making brilliant shots.
This is what playoff basketball is all about, and it’s great.
