Warriors finish off the Rockets in tight Game 7: 3 takeaways

The Golden State Warriors survived a strong first half from the Houston Rockets and held on down the stretch to advance to their fourth straight NBA Finals.

Even on the road, the Warriors were heavy favorites in this game — a product of their legacy and the fact that Chris Paul’s hamstring would keep him on the sidelines. However, the Rockets put Golden State on the ropes early and kept them their through the first 24 minutes.

The Rockets offense was from pristine, but their defense was fantastic and Clint Capela and P.J. Tucker helped them pile up points by pounding the offensive glass. Houston had a five-point lead at the end of the first quarter and stretched it to 11 points at the half, courtesy of a last-second layup by Eric Gordon.

In the second half, the Warriors came out and did what they do — using a 33-15 third quarter to flip the script and regain control. The Rockets shot atrociously from beyond the arc (more on this later) but kept firing away. They simply couldn’t get enough shots to drop and a clearly exhausted James Harden couldn’t make anything else happen.

Time for Cavaliers-Warriors, part four.

Takeaways

Oh-for-everything. Houston’s 3-point shooting is going to be the story that lasts from this game. They missed 27-in-a-row, setting an NBA playoff record. Harden was 2-of-13. Eric Gordon was 2-of-12. Trevor Ariza missed all nine of his attempts. They finished the game 7-of-44, the worst percentage any team has ever shot on over 40 attempts in a single game. On the television broadcast, Chris Webber and Reggie Miller poked at the Rockets game plan relentlessly — ‘if you rely on 3-pointers and shots at the rim, there’s No Plan B!’

That sentiment is ridiculous for several reasons. In any order, 3-pointers and shots at the rim would constitute two separate plans, an A and a B, so to speak. Oh, and how about free throws as a Plan C (the Rockets had the third-highest free throw rate during the regular season). The Rockets were one of the best offenses in the league this season, you don’t abandon a plan because of an epic string of bad luck.

To be fair, the Rockets didn’t miss 27 consecutive 3s just because of bad luck. Their shortened rotation the past few games took a toll. Some were forced and well defended. But the idea that the Rockets would have been better off not taking so many 3s, or that this somehow invalidates the construction of this team or their approach to offense is ridiculous. However, get ready to hear it repeated ad nauseam for the next four months.

The Warriors did Warriors things. One of the most striking things about this series was not just that the Warriors looked vulnerable, it was that Houston made them look vulnerable by knocking them off their rhythm. They’ve been pushed to the brink by careless execution and solid defense and runs of cold shooting, but I’m not sure they’ve ever looked as unfamiliar as they’ve looked in this series. The ball movement plummeted, Durant attacked mismatches. Other than the third quarters, they just didn’t seem like the Warriors.

The truth is that these are not the same Warriors. Durant’s tendencies are bleeding further and further into their offense, just as the accumulated malaise of a regular season run at 85 percent intensity has robbed them of some of their edge. That’s not to say they aren’t or can’t be as good as they’ve been in the past. But it just won’t look the same.

However, in the moments when they buried Houston in this series, it was the best of both worlds. It was Curry’s 27 points and 10 assists tonight, breaking-backs with pull-up 3-pointers early in the clock. It was Klay Thompson’s 19 points on 13 shots, finding all the seams in the defense. It was Kevin Durant methodical in the mid-post and draining jumpers over smaller defenders. The Warriors won by doing Warriors things. It’s just that we might not think of them as Warriors things yet.

Next: How the Four Factors explain the Warriors and Rockets

Process over product. It’s crazy to think about the narrative weight that was riding on this game. If the Rockets win, Chris Paul has the chance to rubber stamp his playoff legacy in the Finals. Mike D’Antoni, Daryl Morey and James Harden all prove that their unconventional ways of doing things are not inherently less than it takes to compete for a title. All the fine tuning done to this roster over the course of the season is validated. On the other side, a Warriors loss might chip away at the veneer of invulnerability fans and media through over them when they signed Kevin Durant. For Durant, a loss might have actually strengthened his legacy, humanizing him the way LeBron’s first Finals loss with the Heat did. It could also have cast a different light on his decision to join the Warriors, that any chance at a ring is worth grabbing, no matter how obvious it seems, because nothing is certain for anyone.

I’d like to argue that all of these things can still be true. The Warriors are still an incredible dynasty unlike anything we’ve ever seen and they are also vulnerable and beatable, and owe just as much of their penultimate success to luck as any NBA champion ever has. Kevin Durant is human and his decision to go to Golden State was a gamble even if we couldn’t see it at the time. Chris Paul is a playoff hero and among the greatest to ever play his position. D’Antoni, Morey and Harden are not irrevocably flawed and these Rockets were exactly as good as they thought they were.