HOUSTON — Shorter, older, slower. Better.The Warriors gave up pounds, inches, years, tons of rebounds, and a lot of other measurable and usually quite important things to the young and ferocious Rockets on Sunday, but the Warriors won Game 1 at Toyota Center, 95-85, anyway.
“I won’t say that we’re smaller,” Jimmy Butler said, “we’re just not as tall. But we’ve got hella fight.”
The Warriors stuck with their small-ball lineup and surrendered a stunning 22 offensive rebounds to the Rockets, who played taller and heavier players at almost every position for most of the game. But through all the banging and clanging in the lane, the Warriors were tougher, smarter, steadier, more locked in on defense, and, of course, they had Curry flinging shots in from all corners of the arena to close the game.
The Warriors needed all of that to take immediate control of this series by winning a game on the road for the 29th time out of 30 series in the Curry era. They’ve done this before. They know what it feels like. They know what it means to go on the road and take the life out of an opponent, at least for one game. They live for this, actually.
“Was the Laker series [in 2023] the only one we didn’t?” Draymond Green said. Note: Yes, that’s the only one. “Shows a lot about the character of our team.”The Warriors have done this so often that the main emotion expressed from the players afterwards was disappointment that they didn’t play better, that they gave up so many offensive rebounds, and that there were several loose balls that never should’ve gone to the Rockets.There was very little crowing. There was a lot of talk about locking in for Game 2 here on Wednesday, with a chance to really put a hold on this series. It was all very intellectualized; it was matter-of-fact Warriors-being-the-Warriors stuff. “No, I didn’t mention it at all,” Steve Kerr said with a sarcastic bite when I asked if he readied his team for a very physical game. “I totally forgot to tell the team that Houston is really physical and great on the glass.”
Folks, when they talk like this, the Warriors are very, very, very dangerous. We’ve all seen this before.
