HOUSTON — Silence enveloped the Houston locker room shortly after theRocketsfell 95-85 to the Golden State Warriors in Game 1 of their first-round Western Conference playoff series Sunday night.
Houston had just scored its fewest points of the season, and its fewest in a playoff game since Game 3 of the 2018 Western Conference finals, also against the Warriors.
Down the hall in front of the assembled media, Rockets coach Ime Udoka discussed how his team “guarded well enough to win,” noting, “[If] you hold someone to 95 [points], you’d expect to win if you have a decent offensive night.”
Asked if there was thought of tweaking his starting lineup, Udoka replied, “Some guys did struggle offensively — you’re not gonna overreact to one game.
“But if guys do play better, we have a chance there. 10-point loss and like I said, holding somebody to 95; it was an offensively poor showing. The defense was good enough. But I’m not gonna overreact to that game, it’s some of those guys’ first times and we had our chances.”
Out of Houston’s eight-man rotation against Golden State, five players (Amen Thompson, Alperen Sengun, Jalen Green, Tari Eason and Jabari Smith Jr.) were making their playoff debuts.
“It’s my first [playoff] game,” Green said. “I’m not too worried about it. I got a taste of what it was, and I’ve just got to answer back. I’ve got to take my time, make the right reads, get the pacing I want and just hunt the shots that I need to get. I feel like I’ve already seen what they’re doing out there throughout 82 games. Just got to be better. We’re doing our job defensively. We’ve just got to score the ball, and we can’t leave [Sengun] out there by himself just to score the ball.”
The Warriors employed an aggressive defensive game plan that featured plenty of physicality while putting two on the ball in pick-and-rolls. In addition to jamming up the passing lanes and the paint, Golden State opted to defend Sengun one-on-one for much of the night, as the Rockets center scored a team-high 26 points. Dillon Brooks and Smith contributed 11 points apiece as Houston’s second-highest scorers.
Golden State forced Houston to settle for dreadful. It started in the backcourt, where Fred VanVleet and Green became the third starting backcourt since 2000 to each shoot 25% or worse (minimum 15 attempts) in the same playoff game, joining theMilwaukeeduo of Eric Bledsoe and Khris Middleton (2019 againstToronto) andChicago‘s Derrick Rose andJimmy Butler(2015 against the Bucks).
Entering Sunday night, Warriors superstar Stephen Curry was 0-10 in road playoff games in which his team failed to score 100 points. Houston helped the night’s leading scorer (31 points) secure his first win under such conditions.
“We just didn’t execute,” VanVleet said. “Maybe the physicality was an issue. But I thought we matched that for the most part. They definitely heat the ball up, but they didn’t do anything differently tonight than they’ve done all season. They heat the ball up. They crowd the paint. They obviously tried to take Jalen out.”
They succeeded, too, limiting Green to 7 points on 3-of-15 shooting, the worst field goal percentage (20%) by a Rocket with at least 15 field goal attempts since 2019, whenJames Harden shot 15% in Game 3 of the opening round of the playoffs against the Utah Jazz.
Houston hit 39.1% from the field and was 6-of-29 from 3-point range Sunday, in addition to committing 17 turnovers that Golden State turned into 25 points.
Despite the Warriors taking a 23-point lead in the third quarter, the Rockets gradually whittled it down to 4 points with 2:38 left on a VanVleet 25-footer off an assist from Thompson.
Interestingly, Houston finished with an offensive rebounding percentage of 46.6%, the highest percentage in a postseason loss since Game 6 of the 2014 opening-round playoff series between the Rockets andPortland Trail Blazers, when Houston lost on a series-ending buzzer-beater.
The Rockets also failed to deliver on Udoka’s mantra to “turn defense into offense” by squandering fast break opportunities. Golden State outscored Houston 16-4 in fast break points, but the Rockets hit just 2-of-7 on those opportunities after ranking 7th during the regular season in fast break scoring (17.0).
“They are not a typical modern NBA team in terms of spreading you out, playing fast, shooting a million 3s,” Warriors coach Steve Kerr said. “They’re kind of old school. In many ways, they’re in the image of their coach. Ime, he was grimy as a player. He was tough, physical and that’s what Houston is. It felt like 1997 out there to me, [a] completely different NBA game than what we’re used to, and we’ve got to be ready for that. This is what this series is going to be.”
