After the discussions of the last few days, the Houston Rockets have returned impressively in Game 2, sometimes beating the Golden State Warriors with their own weapons. After that, however, all the protagonists insisted that they had not changed anything at all.
Mike D’Antoni reacted almost angrily to the question of what had made his team offensively different from Game 1. The discussions about the isolation-heavy game after Game 1 obviously annoyed the head coach of the Rockets quite a bit. “We switched from a wide open California open to Triple Threat,” D’Antoni replied sarcastically.
More seriously, he added: “We’re not just going to change the way we play in the middle of this series. We’ve been playing like this all year. We are who we are. We can beat any team with this style of play, anytime, anywhere. “Though some people may not like it.”
It seemed quite important to him to make this point, as a lap of honor after the blowout that had finally made a series out of the Western Conference Finals. D’Antoni also took the opportunity to point out that the Warriors had played very slowly and had run many isolations. After all, Kevin Durant is quite good at it.
The reaction may have seemed a bit biting – as if it were outrageous for an NBA coach to think about optimizations after a play-off defeat – but D’Antoni was basically telling the truth. The Rockets hadn’t fundamentally changed the way they played in Game 2. They simply implemented them much better and more consistently and adapted some minor details.
Offensively, the Rockets’ game plan still included quite a few isolations for James Harden, Chris Paul or Eric Gordon, depending on who was defended by Stephen Curry. This was more important than in Game 1: Curry was involved as the primary defender in 23 proud Possessions, more than in all previous games of these playoffs. They wanted to make him tired and brittle and were quite successful with it. Curry didn’t look like a double MVP in that game.
In addition, the game was made faster if possible, at least after the warriors had missed or lost the ball, the Rockets finished faster than in Game 1, which gave them some easy points at the beginning. After the Dubs scored, Harden and Paul walked forward just as comfortably as before and went to work against sorted defense. As I said, it was not a fundamentally new plan.
Houston’s appearance as a completely different team was primarily for other reasons, and most of them can be summed up quite well with P.J. Tucker’s personality. His record of the match already explained a lot: “It was not in the least about the offense. Frankly, I’m never worried about my offense. It’s all about defense.”
Even though the Rockets burned down an offensive firework in game 2 with 127 points and Tucker set a career high with 22 points – they won the game in the defense, where they simply went to work with more determination. The Warriors are always talking about focus, but the Rockets also have their games in which they don’t show the necessary intensity and rely too much on the offense. This was punished at the beginning and should now be corrected accordingly.
In the early Thursday morning of German time the rotations sat, there were hardly any breakdowns that had led to several open threesomes for Klay Thompson in game 1. Thompson was not a factor at all in this game because Houston was extremely limited by the Warriors’ transition options and did not lose sight of him after switches. The Dubs helped with some hair-raising ball losses, but the Rockets also worked hard for it.
Each stop seemed to give the Rockets additional energy, which was then converted into points at the front. To a certain extent, the game of the Rockets became independent and the threesomes, which had not fallen into game 1, ended up in the basket again. “Everything was driven by our defense,” said Gordon, who sunk six threes. “We quickly switched over, found the open man and hit the litters.”
Sometimes the Rockets did runs like you are used to from the Warriors. Not necessarily in terms of the way you play, but in terms of the robbery speed and explosiveness that can demoralize an opponent. This was mainly driven by the Rockets bringing in their own version of the “Death Lineup”.
The formation called “Tuckwagon”, consisting of Paul, Harden, Gordon, Ariza and Tucker, had only been used for three minutes in game 1, this time they brought D’Antoni for ten minutes and were rewarded: their net rating was a whopping 30.5. “We have the feeling that the small lineup is our best line-up,” Tucker said afterwards.
The 1.98 metre Tucker plays a central role as a backup centre, comparable to Draymond Green’s at the Warriors. “I love this lineup because I can dictate our defense,” said the 33-year-old. He did a great job in this game. Green was harmless and was able to sink, so he was always on the spot to quickly fill any gaps in the defense.
Of course, neither Tucker nor Ariza Durant were able to stop Durant from scoring – nobody will be able to do that at the moment anyway. KD is in a scary form and it hardly matters who defends it how. Durant also came out of the field in this game with 38 points and an outstanding 13 out of 22. But the Rockets managed to take all the other Warriors out of the game as best they could, and KD could not win that game alone.
The Rockets are just too strong for that. The “Hamptons 5” also noticed this – the otherwise dreaded Warrior formation was used in this match in 21:25 minutes and lost it with -17, which is actually not intended in the matrix. Durant alone had a plus/minus of -28 despite his individually strong performance.
“Shit happens”, KD said after the game. “We’re not unbeatable. “We’re a good team, but there’s also a great team on the other side.” Maybe that was the enduring conclusion of Game 2.
The Rockets remain the underdog in this series, they have lost the home advantage and the Warriors have already fulfilled their “duty” in Game 1. But in game 2, the Rockets proved that they’re not a team that can get rid of Golden State in passing if the champion doesn’t bring his A-game himself. The A-Game of the Rockets is also quite excellent.
“When we come out and do our thing, it doesn’t matter who’s facing us. If not, you can see the results as in Game 1,” said Harden, in the spirit of his coach. “This isn’t about chess or what they do next. It’s about us.”