Rockets, Warriors square off for final time in regular season
Chris Paul and James Harden must put their heads (and skills) together in figuring out how to make Golden State not so golden
To the Rockets, the final regular-season meeting with the Golden State Warriors is hugely important. But the significance is not because it is a chance to beat the NBA champions, or to be on the prime-time national television stage or even to exorcise the Toyota Center demons against a team that has dominated them on their home floor.
At least when logic can still drive perspective before the lights go on, one regular-season game in January can’t be given much more meaning than another. The Rockets were built for the shot they hope to get at the Warriors in the spring, not now.
The only way for the Rockets to bulk up for the tests they hope will come is to take on those sort of challenges now.
“We just got to get better, got to get to a championship level. They are (there),” coach Mike D’Antoni said. “They do all the right things. You watch them — how they pass the ball, when they cut, what they do — they do the right things. We don’t always do the right things.
“They do everything at a championship level. We’re not yet. We have ups and downs. We’re not there, but we have to have a better mentality of being a champion all the time.”
When citing what the Rockets lack, D’Antoni always included “yet.” No result on a January night means the Rockets have arrived in a com-
parison with a team with championships in two of the past three seasons and a near-miss in the year between. The Warriors have won 12 of the last 14 games against the Rockets, including seven straight in Houston. And that does not include the eight wins in 10 postseason games during Golden State’s runs to the titles.
Yet, as much as teams are strengthened by the long postseason march to a title, the teams chasing them need nights like Saturday, with the atmosphere and intensity certain to fill the arena as it did 16 days earlier when the Warriors were in town, to provide a taste of the showdowns potentially ahead.
For the Rockets, the biggame atmosphere could provide the impetus to play with more consistent urgency.
“There’s always extra little juice in your step,” D’Antoni said. “It’s a big game and we know it is. It’s on ABC and all that. It should be fun.
“We have to get back … in transition. Sometimes we didn’t get back totally. They will exploit every time you just do not do it right. You have to play with great intensity all the time. If you let down, they’re going to get you. That’s why they’re the champions.”
As with the previous meetings, regardless of results, there will be something of an asterisk. Andre Iguodala, the Warriors’ sixth man that the Rockets tried to sign as a free agent last July, missed the season opener and is questionable. James Harden and Kevin Durant did not play in the second game between the teams. Trevor Ariza and Gerald Green, who had a season-high 29 points in the previous meeting, will serve the second games of their two-game suspensions on Saturday.
The Rockets could not be defined in a game played without Harden, even with Durant also out, and likely will not be with Harden limited while coming back from his hamstring injury.
“It doesn’t matter if it’s Saturday night ABC or Tuesday night whatever, just try to win games,” Harden said. He did, however, say that when Ariza and Green return, the Rockets would have a chance to become something greater, an opportunity put on hold with just 13 games played with their starting lineup.
“Even two days ago in practice, we looked like the first game of the season,” Harden said of having the roster whole for one workout before the suspension. “Even the first game, Chris wasn’t even healthy. We’ve just been battling through injuries. Once guys get healthy and we get our full roster back, which hopefully will be Monday, it’s go time to the All-Star break.”
But when asked if anything more specific than any other game on the schedule could be taken from a meeting with the Warriors, Paul said, “No, not really.”
Still, a game against the team on the top seems if nothing else to be useful, even if that might not be the theme of ABC’s commercials.
“Again, one game,” D’Antoni said. “You see where we have to improve and you use that. But it’s exciting to be a part of. The team we are right now has to be very different from the team we are in April. If it isn’t, we’re not going to be able to do what we need to do. We need to get better.”