After Game 1, Warriors vs. Rockets will be decided on the margins

With 30 seconds left in the first half of the Golden State Warriors’ 104-100 win to the Houston Rockets in Game 1 of the Western Conference semifinals, Stephen Curry was blitzed by James Harden and P.J. Tucker. He fumbled the ball, Harden recovered, found Eric Gordon for an open 3-pointer and Gordon drilled it to tie the game at 53. For the Warriors, it was the 13th turnover of the first half. For the Rockets, it was just the ninth made 3-pointer out of 28 attempted.

Each of these teams has a respective powder keg: turnovers for Golden State and 3-point shooting dry spells for Houston. Both went boom in this Western Conference Finals rematch. If Game 1 proved anything, it’s that whichever team does a better job playing to its ideal will get a decisive edge.

During the regular season, the Warriors gave up the sixth-most points off turnovers in the league. The Rockets lost 10 of the 14 games in which they made 11 3-pointers or fewer.

In Game 1, the Rockets scored 20 points off 20 Warriors turnovers, which helped mitigate the fact that they made just 14 of their 47 3-point attempts (29.8 percent). Golden State still got the win in part due to Kevin Durant’s 35 points and Curry hitting a dagger 29-footer with 25.9 seconds left — a much different outcome than the final few seconds of the first half.

After 13 first-half turnovers, the Warriors coughed it up just seven times in the second. The Rockets, meanwhile, were even icier from range, making just five second-half 3s.

The Warriors also took away a big part of what makes the Rockets motor run: Clint Capela. Capela, who ended last series playing with a virus, still seemed a step slow. He finished with just 4 points and 6 rebounds, and Houston was outscored by 17 points when he was on the floor. This writer can’t recall a lob between him and Harden that connected.

Golden State opened up the series in its death lineup (with Andre Iguodala starting in place of a traditional center), which should have been the green light Capela needed to clock in early on the glass but, instead, Capela played hooky.

The Rockets need Capela at full strength so they can win those key minutes when Draymond Green is playing center. (Montrezl Harrell did a much better job for the L.A. Clippers in the first round of punishing Golden State’s smaller lineups than Capela did on Sunday.) The Warriors want to play Capela off the floor. The Rockets want to limit the minutes Golden State’s Death Eaters run wild. After one, advantage Warriors.

Still, the Rockets did enough to keep it to a two-point game with 40 seconds remaining. Harden scrounged up everything he could get and Gordon stepped up with 27 points. There were times during Game 1 when it looked like Houston was in control, and vice versa.

That’s how most of these games should play out. These were the two best offenses in the league during the regular season — one way or another, they’ll score enough points to stay in it.

After that, it comes down to the other stuff: the key offensive rebound, the clutch 3-pointer, a lucky bounce.

“We had our chances to win,” said Rockets head coach Mike D’Antoni. “You’re just not just going to come in and blow these guys away. So things have to go right. A couple of lapses boxing out. But overall I thought we played well enough to win and just didn’t get it done.”

Green: “The game usually comes down to more than what we know and what they know. It usually comes down to a few loose balls — who is making those extra effort plays, who is getting the 50-50 balls, who is cleaning up the glass the best. That’s usually what it comes down to. When a team knows the other opposing team as well as we know them and as well as they know us.”

Both of these teams know what they are up against and after one game it would be a mistake to expect any surprises. Volatility — like a barrel of gunpowder — is what these teams are built to neutralize. Now it might be the only way either can get an edge.

In the final 20 seconds of the game, that’s exactly what happened. After a Harden dunk to cut the Warriors’ lead to three, Danuel House Jr. and Chris Paul jumped Durant and forced a turnover. Paul passed to Harden and Harden missed an open 29-footer for the tie with Green contesting. Paul made a mad dash for the offensive rebound and came up with it along the near sideline when Klay Thompson slid in front of him, forcing Paul to reroute in tight quarters. The officials whistled he stepped out of bounds. Paul thought Thompson fouled him, and that Green fouled Harden, and let the referee know. He was hit with his second technical of the game and ejected. The series of events effectively ended the game. Paul walked off the floor yelling at the referee, D’Antoni did the same a few seconds later.

“The last 20 seconds? I’ve already lost my mind before that. I don’t have a clue what happened the last 20 seconds,” D’Antoni said. “I don’t know, I don’t know.

“I thought we played as hard as we could play and things just didn’t go our way. And we did a good job the last 20 seconds, just coming up with the steal, having a chance at a tie on a 3-pointer that James could have got hit, could have not. Who knows?

“I mean, but I know, but, anyway, whatever.”

The first battle could have gone either way. So too can this series.