The Houston Rockets are one win away from the NBA Finals after outlasting the Warriors 98-94 in a completely wild Game 5 of the Western Conference finals on Thursday. Houston now leads the series 3-2 heading to Oakland for Game 6 on Saturday.
There is so much to say about this game, and this series, so let's get to it. Here are five things to know from Game 5:
1. Will injury put red-hot Chris Paul on ice?
First things first: If you were one of the trumpeters of the "Chris Paul is not a big-time winner" narrative, which is perhaps the laziest, weakest take in NBA history, just show yourself out. This guy, man. After a brilliant Game 4, Paul was again the best player on the floor for crucial stretches in Game 5, even if his stat line doesn't jump off the page -- 20 points on 6-of-19 shooting, seven rebounds, six assists. In a game that was won on pure guts, Paul was just the soul of this Rockets team when James Harden couldn't find even a spec of his heart or game, which we'll get to in a second.
When Paul was traded to Houston, a league exec told me -- and I'm paraphrasing here -- that it was going to be a great marriage because Paul would bring things to Houston that it was missing, and Houston's style and supporting cast would provide Paul with some things he was missing. How that has turned out to be true. Here you have a team that all but outlaws mid-range shots and one of the best mid-range players in history meeting in the middle, and the result is a team that can now get buckets different ways than on paper.
So many times in this series, Paul has sustained a run, or held one off, or just calmed the flow of the game with a patented pull-up in the lane or from 16 feet, the exact shots Houston supposedly despises. Give the Rockets credit for bending this principle, because it's saving them in this series as they struggle from three.
On the flip side, Paul has adapted to Houston's game in all the right ways, too, taking almost two more 3-pointers per game this year than he did last year, and over 100 more of the pull-up variety. The four threes he dropped in Game 5 were seemingly worth four they were so huge, including this answered prayer that led to his mocking Stephen Curry's shimmy like a boss:
Somehow, Paul was a minus-13 for this game.
If you need a reason to dismiss analytics, there you have it.
Unfortunately, we can only celebrate Paul so much, because he might be out for Game 6 or even the rest of this series, or maybe the rest of the playoffs entirely. Let's hope that's not the case, but he came out of Game 5 late with a hamstring injury (reported by TNT's Kristen Ledlow), and it was one of those pulls that you could just tell from the defeated look on his face might be bad. Again, let's hope not. This series deserves Paul. Paul deserves this series and however long these playoffs last. He's played his whole career for this. If he can't play in Game 6, it's hard to imagine how the Rockets can beat the Warriors on the road. Paul will be re-evaluated on Friday morning. Stay tuned ...
2. The old Warriors are not coming through that door
Listen, there's only one way to say this: The Warriors are not the same team anymore (well, except for the turnovers; in that regard they are still very much the same team). They're still great, but the combination of Houston getting better and the Warriors becoming a worse version of themselves is the reason this series is where it's at. Gone, for the most part, is the beautiful ball movement we have come to expect from the Warriors, who now look a lot like, well, the Rockets, playing isolation through Kevin Durant basically these entire playoffs, which I, and a lot of other people, suspected could eventually bite them as the competition heated up.
Once again, the Rockets won the 3-point battle in Game 5, making 13 to the Warriors' 10, while attempting 17 more than Golden State. Pretty simply, the Warriors just aren't a 3-point shooting team anymore. They're still 3-point capable, but they don't hunt them. They have decided they are going to play through Durant. A team that used to flip the math game on everyone else is now susceptible to the very advantage it seemingly created. Their flow isn't the same. Nothing is the same. Now, the Warriors have so much talent, and Durant is so great, that they can clearly still win this way. They went 16-1 in the playoffs last year for crying out loud.
But again, they had more margin for error last year. The Rockets have closed the gap. Golden State is just not the same. The Warriors had 18 assists in Game 5 when they are a team that used to put up 30 assists like clockwork. How many of those 18 assists did Durant have? Zero. How about Draymond Green, who used to be the Warriors' main distributor as everyone else worked off the ball? Four. Again, not the same Warriors.
That said, it's not all Golden State just deciding to play differently. Houston is forcing some of, if not a lot of, this offensive stall. Which brings us to ...
3. This Rockets defense is no joke
Houston has now won two straight games in this series -- against perhaps the most collectively talented offense in history -- with its defense. Kudos to Houston GM Daryl Morey, who has happily admitted that the Rockets are obsessed with beating the Warriors, and he has built his team accordingly. Jamal Crawford said it best:
Former Pistons great Rip Hamilton told me pretty much the exact same thing a couple days ago when he and I argued about why Durant was playing so much iso ball. I said it was the Warriors' choice to play that way, which I still firmly believe. Rip said the Warriors' shooters can't get space because Houston is switching every screen which is shutting down the ball movement, and there's truth in that, too.
This is exactly how Morey planned it with guys like P.J. Tucker, Trevor Ariza, a versatile big in Clint Capela, who is capable of guarding perimeter players, Chris Paul who will fight two weight classes up and be just fine, and even guys like Eric Gordon and Gerald Green, who are not great defenders but are at least the right size to keep the switching going.
But ... the Warriors are still giving in to this too easily. Curry has shown in the past three games he is more than capable of getting his offense on any Houston defender, and when Golden Sate has moved the ball, it has gotten them buckets. More than anything, this is the Rockets imposing their will. They want to play a certain way, and they are forcing the Warriors to play that way rather than Golden State dictating its own terms, which is what we used to expect from a team that for three years wrote its own rules.
Either way, the results speak for themselves: Two games in a row the Warriors have been held under 100 points. In Game 4, Houston held the Warriors to 12 fourth-quarter points on 2-of-13 shooting from Durant and Curry. In Game 5, Durant got blanked in the fourth quarter. Went 0-for-4 from the field. Didn't get a shot in the final 3:30. That's 1-for-9 over the last two fourth quarters for Durant. Give the Rockets credit. You know he wanted to score. You know the Warriors wanted him to score. He couldn't do it.
4. What were the Warriors doing down the stretch?
Let's get this straight: A team with Stephen Curry, Kevin Durant and Klay Thompson rested the outcome of three of its final four possessions, in a one-possession game, on the shoulders of Draymond Green and Quinn Cook. Granted, Cook's look from three was a good one, and Green sank a three to cut the lead to one with a little over a minute to play. That was a monster shot. But still, if you're supposed to go down with your big guns, this was pretty much the exact opposite of that.
The final possession was the ultimate head-scratcher.
So Golden State has the ball with 6.7 seconds left, down two, and they go to .... Draymond? I mean, take a look at this play. Curry gets the inbound pass and immediately tried to advance it to Green, who picks the worst time imaginable to go butterfingers.
Never mind that even had Green caught the ball, Durant was being face-guarded on the opposite side at about 40 feet and wasn't even attempting to move, and Curry was the one who made the pass and was basically out of the play. Green was going to have to make a play off the dribble against tight defense with the clock bearing down. That's what you call with three of the best shooters in history in your huddle?
I have long touted Steve Kerr as an incredible coach, and he is. But there are some things about the way he's coaching this particular team that deserve at least some questioning.
5. Harden needs to rebound in a big way
Harden was awful in Game 5. Like, abysmal. Dude went 0-for-11 from three, and 5-for-21 overall. By the end he wasn't even really trying to make shots, but just praying for flailing calls going to the rim. He got a few of them, but overall Paul and the fellas bailed him out in a big way in the biggest game of his Rockets career. He deserves a pass. He hasn't been great for most of this series, and by his standards has been pretty inconsistent throughout the playoffs, but the playoffs are different. This isn't easy. Again, Durant was shut out in money time, and he's probably the second-best player in the world. It happens.
But it cannot happen in Game 6 if Paul is out. We'll continue to hope he can play, but if not, the only chance the Rockets have in Oracle is for Harden to do his MVP thing. If he can do that, and send the Rockets to the NBA Finals, nothing else will matter.
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