ROCKETS GET IT DONE SATURDAY.
Star backcourt of Paul, Harden outplay their counterparts
The rust was gone, the minutes restriction forgotten, or at least ignored, with no one able to keep James Harden off the floor to stop him from his place on a night like this.
The Rockets and Golden State Warriors had chased each other into the final minutes of a last regular-season meeting before they could, as so many predict, meet in May. The Rockets led the Warriors, a team that had mastered such moments, by three points. For all the times the Rockets had insisted they cannot be defined by one game, they wanted this one and maybe needed it badly.
The knockout punch
Harden was isolated on Stephen Curry and went to work. He hit Curry with the crossovers that melt others, but Curry held firm until the shot clock was down to its last ticks. With that, Harden nailed his 3-pointer with 70 seconds remaining. When he blocked Curry’s answer, the Rockets finished off a 116-108 Saturday night special win, with their star backcourt delivering the final punch.
“To beat a champion like them, you got to knock them out,” Rockets coach Mike D’Antoni said. “They’re not going to just lose. In the fourth quarter, to hold them to 17 was obviously key. Guys stepped up. P.J. (Tucker) stepped up. James hits the dagger. Chris Paul was unbelievable all game.
“They’re still the champions. I told the team during the timeout, ‘You have to knock them out.’ It’s like a heavyweight fight. There’s no TKOs.”
Had the Rockets held Harden to the 30 minutes they planned for him in his second game back from a strained hamstring, he would not have been on the floor when the game was decided. Instead, he returned with 4:24 remaining and the Rockets clinging to a one-point lead, and then teamed with Paul to drive them through the finish.
“That was out!” Harden said of the 30-minute limit. “Thirty minutes, I know how important this game was. A couple extra minutes wouldn’t hurt.
“I felt like trash last game. It felt good to be back out there. Not worried about scoring. Just worried about getting in shape and being locked in on both ends of the floor. Obviously, my scoring and playmaking abilities will come when I get my rhythm back.”
Didn’t want to hear it
If anyone suggested that Harden not return, D’Antoni pretended he could not hear them and knew Harden would not have listened anyway.
“I don’t hear too well in certain situations,” D’Antoni said. “Anyway, they know better than that. They have to deal with James. I’m a pushover. James wasn’t coming out.
“And we said if James plays 15 minutes the first half, the second half, we can kind of fudge it a little bit as long as it wasn’t long stretches. He deserved to finish the game.”
With that, the Rockets’ star backcourt outplayed the Warriors’.
Paul led the Rockets with 33 points, 11 rebounds and seven assists. Harden added 22 points with eight assists. The Warriors’ combination of Curry and Klay Thompson combined for 27 points on 9-of-31 shooting.
That might have opened the way and helped make up for what was missing. Eric Gordon struggled in the game and Trevor Ariza and Gerald Green werer suspended. But the Rockets won by owning the final minutes, when the Warriors are normally at their best.
“They won their championship because they execute and they’re going to make big shots,” Paul said. “We just tried to weather the storm.”
A win for ‘swag’
They did more than that. The Warriors made just two of their final 10 shots. Though they missed shots they normally make, they also met with a more determined Rockets defense.
“That’s what we had to do,” Harden said. “They’re such a great team, any lapse defensively that we had, they capitalized on. The fourth quarter was a conscious effort of not letting them get any easy baskets, easy 3s, and making sure we contested everything.”
With the victory, the Rockets moved within 3½ games of the Warriors (two in the loss column) and clinched the tiebreaker between the teams.
Yet, the Rockets believed they needed to close the game against the Warriors on the floor as much as in the Western Conference standings.
“It was important for both,” Harden said. “It was important … for our swag.”
With that, they claimed more than the win.
“Now we know,” Rockets center Clint Capela said, “that we definitely can beat them.”