‘HALFWAY HOME’
Two opponents down, two to go, starting with reigning champs
Hours after P.J. Tucker put in the final 3-pointer of the Rockets’ night, holding his gooseneck follow-through as the Toyota Center crowd rose and roared around him, another crowd in another arena 1,900 miles away chanted through the final moments of another win.
“We want Houston! We want Houston!”
Draymond Green, Golden State’s All-Star and loquacious spokesman, soon declared that the Warriors have accomplished too much to care which team is in their way, though he had plenty to say on the subject back when Rockets general manager Daryl Morey revealed he was obsessed with the Warriors.
No matter how either team spins its interest in achieving its championship goal by taking down the other, they have been headed toward this showdown since opening night, when the Warriors were given their rings. The Rockets took the win by the slimmest of margins and were declared the best Western Conference challenger the Warriors have faced.
The Rockets would back that by taking two of the season’s three meetings with the Warriors and winning more games in the regular season, with a better offense and a greater point differential than had any oppo-
nent in Golden State’s championship era.
The Rockets established themselves as the best team of this season. The Warriors already were among the best of any season.
After 6½ months of dancing around each other, getting through the injuries that filled the regular season and 10 games apiece in the postseason, the Rockets and Warriors finally arrive at the showdown long expected as if, despite Green’s rant du jour, it was inevitable and even right all along.
“This team is going to be hard; it’s going to be a fight,” Rockets center Clint Capela said. “There’s going to be a lot of adjustments after every game. It’s going to be a chess game. Of course, we’re going to be ready. They’ve been to the finals for three straight years. We’re just excited. Everybody’s excited about it. And I’m sure all the NBA fans are excited about it, too.”
The Rockets, as with the Warriors, have said throughout the season that their goal is only to win the championship, not to beat a particular opponent. But for the Rockets, there has been an understanding that the task would almost certainly require they knock off the Warriors because there was little chance anyone could do it for them. That was the point of Morey’s admission, along with the offseason moves to add Chris Paul’s star power to close the gap with a team with four All-Stars, plus fortify the defense with the switch-everything abilities of Luc Mbah a Moute and Tucker.
By the time the Rockets took the season series with their Jan. 20 victory over the Warriors, with the Rockets leading by 17 points and winning by eight, Capela declared the Rockets “know” they will beat the Warriors if they play the right way.
“That’s all fine and dandy in January,” Green said Tuesday. “But now … they got us, we got them. Got to go out there and play. We’ll see who’s better.”
If that makes it sound as if he doth protested too much when he insisted the Warriors don’t care who stands in the way — “We don’t have to say nothing,” Stephen Curry said of the showdown with the Rockets — Green was clear.
“We won two championships in three years,” Green said. “We don’t have to run around talking about how bad we want to play somebody. We want to win another championship, and it don’t matter who is in the way of that. If you in the way of that, then you happen to be in the way. We’re not about to run around like, ‘Yeah, we want to play them in the conference finals.’ For what? It don’t matter to us who we play.”
After their Game 5 elimination of Utah on Tuesday, the Rockets were less specific about their opponent or any desire to knock out the champs, though that could have been at least in part because at the time, the Warriors were still busy with the New Orleans Pelicans. The Rockets did, however, refer to a goal greater than a conference championship, even if that can only come by dethroning the Warriors.
“We’re halfway home,” Rockets coach Mike D’Antoni said.
Some variation of the idea of being “halfway” through the postseason trek to an NBA championship was repeated often, a clear nod to goals in line with Golden State’s, rather than to just knocking off the Warriors.
“I did hear ‘halfway there,’ ” Mbah a Moute said after Tuesday’s 112-102 victory over the Jazz. “I don’t know where it came from, but I heard it. Obviously, we know what’s ahead of us. That’s the champs. It’s going to be a tough task. You better be ready. But we have what we need. We’ve been that way all season. We’re ready. They have to be ready for us as well. I think we showed all season we match up well with them.
“When you look at the team, we knew what we had as far as … where we could go. We’ve done what we’re supposed to do. We were the best team in the league all year, but that’s not our goal. Our goal is to go further. So let’s continue the goal.”