Turnovers leave a mark
Rockets’ mistakes provide Warriors with vital edge in Game 1
The Rockets have been decent in the postseason when it comes to turnovers, and they weren’t terrible in the Western Conference finals opener against Golden State. But they know they have to be better in that area if they’re going to stand a chance against the Warriors.
“We’ve got to cut down on turnovers,” said guard Eric Gordon, who tied for the team high with James Harden with four each in Golden State’s 119-106 win Monday night at Toyota Center. “We’ve been doing (pretty) well this whole playoffs (regarding turnovers); we just have to be a little better at everything.”
The Rockets committed a postseason-high 16 turnovers as Harden and Gordon accounting for half of the total, with five other players committing one each (including three team turnovers) in a well-rounded showing of occasional bumbling. The Warriors finished with nine turnovers and had only one player commit as many as three.
“It’s not like they won huge tonight,” Gordon said of the 13point difference. “It got away from us when we started fouling toward the end of the game, and they started making free throws. We were still in it. With some little adjustments, we’ll be right there (in Game 2).”
The Rockets entered the conference finals averaging 9.7 turnovers over their 10 previous games in the playoffs, with Harden easily leading the way with 31. Take away the likely league MVP’s postseason fumbles leading to the conference finals, and the Rockets averaged 6.6 prior to Monday night.
So Monday was an aberration on the tidiness front for the Rockets, and they’re angling to clean up their act by Wednesday’s Game 2, when they need to win to give themselves any chance of making their first NBA Finals since 1995.
“If we want to beat them, we have to be mentally sharper,” Rockets coach Mike D’Antoni said. “KD (Kevin Durant), he’s tough, and obviously he was on tonight. You can live with that. But you can’t live with that (when you) make mental mistakes, and that’s what we did.
“The combination of the two was devastating. We’ll get that better. We’ll make some adjustments on little things that we can do better.”
Durant led the Warriors with 37 points. The Rockets played fairly clean in the first half, when the teams were tied 56-56. But they committed nine of their 16 turnovers in the second half, with Harden committing all four of his in that span and Gordon three over the last two quarters.
The Warriors built a sevenpoint lead after three quarters and by game’s end were running the Rockets out of their own building.
“Every time we made a mistake,” Rockets guard Chris Paul said, “they made us pay.”