3rd quarter is the season in a nutshell
They can’t even lose right. That’s how messed up these totally screwed up Rockets are.
Sink-everything Steph Curry couldn’t hit a thing, weakly crumpled to the floor, then disappeared for the second time in the series.
Toyota Center pulsed like it was April 2015 all over again, rediscovering its discarded belief in a team that seemed like it had somehow found its long-lost heart.
The “real MVP” was given a worldwide platform to prove his ultimate worth, while his sidekick Superman had soft hands and a smoothly flowing cape.
It was 56-all after two
ear-pounding quarters. A 2-2 stalemate via the redeeming glory of Game 4 was in sight. And man, if you snuck into a soldout arena at peak point Sunday afternoon, you would’ve sworn the Rockets were the NBA’s golden gift to fawning 24/7 TV sports programming and the little ol’ Warriors were a fractured, broken team on the verge of finally dying a death seven months in the making.
Then the trash can was put back on the hardwood.
Then owner Les Alexander watched $38 million of his hard-earned cash carelessly poured down the drain.
The Rockets brass quietly logged out of its team-propaganda Twitter account at the same time Charles Barkley started laughing his rear end off.
That team that’s wasted your time all season, constantly infuriated us since October, got Kevin McHale fired and cruelly lied to us from regularseason Game 1 to 82?
It was back. With a cold, hard vengeance.
Too much to ask
No one was going to be able to say these Rockets actually cared enough to try for 48 critical minutes.
No one would be allowed to remember a time when the worst experiment of general manager Daryl Morey’s tenure actually clicked a little, erasing the Curry-less Warriors in a game that currently defines a severely lopsided series. We would all be right. They would again be so wrong.
And after 86 games of this insulting horror show, 41-20 glorious Golden State in the third period was an avalanche of indisputable proof that suddenly landed midcourt, madly stacking up in front of our sickened faces.
“Just a terrible quarter.” “Terrible way to lose.” “How it’s been all season long.”
That was all courtesy of James Harden, who was 4-of-13 from the floor and didn’t win over any haters as his team perfectly played dead again and the non-real MVP spent the fourth quarter taking an early vacation by sleeping on his back.
“I don’t think anything. I know what happened. They wanted the game. We didn’t.”
That was Jason Terry, who ripped down a locker-room clothes hanger before again being one of the few Rockets with the professional heart to call his super-soft team out.
“When the moment called for us to raise our intensity levels, we dropped our guard.”
That was interim coach J.B. Bickerstaff, whose turncoats were gunned down by Warriors guard Klay Thompson in the third quarter (12 points, four 3-pointers) and who is now one loss away from likely not being allowed to call himself Rockets coach in October.
Then there was a well-paid veteran whose identity I will protect. But rest assured he wore red Sunday, “ran” the floor, and is listed on the Rock- ets’ official roster.
And the sight of a shellshocked Dwight Howard silently sitting in front of his locker, staring with zombie eyes at his phone while a nearby teammate laughed up a storm following 121-94 reigning NBA champions probably tells you everything you ever wanted to know about the postseason favorite for most disappointing team in the league.
Guarantee? Not quite
Actually, there was also this.
“Game 5 won’t be the last game for us.”
That was Howard, responding to a question about whether he has considered that Wednesday by the Bay could be his final night wearing a Rockets uniform.
Howard blatantly ignored his future — kind of like how the rim always ignores his free throws — and instead replied with what sounded like a hard guarantee.
Rockets back at Toyota Center. Game 6. Book it, chump.
But when the $22 million man was asked how certain he was that this broken, selfish, trashy thing won’t be buried for good in Game 5, he casually backed away from his initial public statement.
“We’re going to try to win,” Howard said. “You can say what you want to say. You can take it however you want to take it.”
It was so Howard, so 2015-16 Rockets, and so very weak. Hollow. Empty. Untrue. The Rockets could have said everything they’ve needed to say all season in Sunday’s third quarter. We were ready and wanted to believe.
Curry was gone again. Toyota Center was back. A 2-2 series and pulling off the unthinkable were easily imaginable.
Then the Harden-Howard Rockets returned. And the team that can’t even lose right came back to life one more time. On the verge of death, right in front of our worn-out eyes.