Tough decisions follow tough loss
D’Antoni believes team is close, on right path
As coach Mike D’Antoni made his way around the Rockets’ locker room late Monday night, offering whatever words he could to break through the crushing disappointment, reality set in.
There were facts, disagreeable as they were, the Rockets had to accept. They had to let go of the determination that this would be their championship season, the belief that had driven them. And D’Antoni could not go door-todoor to comfort those who had come to believe along with them.
No Rockets team had ever won as many games, with a franchise-record 65 victories in the regular season preceding 11 more in the playoffs. But falling five wins short of the goal they used as motivation left the Rockets searching for ways to improve a team that was already strong enough to tease with championship potential but ran into a truth as discomforting as the 101-92 Game 7 loss to Golden State.
“Obviously, Golden State has set the bar for the whole league, not just us,” D’Antoni said soon after a second consecutive second-half collapse was complete. “We know where we have to go. We feel like we’re really close, and we just need a good summer of work. We turned it on defensively, I think, from
the All-Star break on. That will not slip. We’ll get even better there. And so I’m obviously optimistic because of the guys we’re dealing with, and they’re winners.
“You keep knocking on the door, and they’ll eventually open.”
There is as a chance, however, that the Rockets could face the fate of the entire Eastern Conference in the era of LeBron James or of the championship potential of Utah butting up to the seasons of Hakeem Olajuwon and Michael Jordan in their primes.
The Rockets’ season indicated they will not concede Golden State’s greatness. They dared greatly, calling out the Warriors when general manager Daryl Morey confessed to his obsession with taking them down and building a team for that purpose, then nearly lived up to that ambition before Chris Paul’s strained hamstring and the inability to make the shots they value most kept them a half away.
“It’s definitely tough, because when everybody counted us out before the series, we knew we had a chip on our shoulder to win this series,” guard Eric Gordon said. “It sucks, because you know you can win this series if we just had one more playmaker.”
It remains to be seen if the Rockets’ best shot at a championship was lost when they could not put in their best shots, missing 27 consecutive 3-pointers.
In all, the Rockets missed an NBA playoff-record 37 3s. Of the 30 they took that were open, they made five. When the closest defender was four to six feet away, the Rockets made one of 14 3-pointers.
The Rockets had built a 15-point lead not with sharpshooting or precision but incredible emotional energy. More than being fatigued by extended playing time or the increased load with Paul out, the Rockets might have exhausted themselves via an adrenaline-draining first half in which they never settled in at a level they could maintain.
Hard to ignore big chill
The Rockets won’t want to overreact to the big chill that befell their offense. But they can no more ignore it than forget it. If the goal becomes to better diversify their offense, they will have to consider that they scored 56 points in the paint (twice as many as the Warriors) and had the player brought in to create and knock down a greater variety of shots agonizing on the bench with a hamstring injury that takes weeks, not days, to heal.
With Paul a free agent, the Rockets will have to consider his injuries at 33 years old, but they also saw how desperately they need him if they’re going to play at the Warriors’ level. A max contract would be worth roughly $205 million over five years, but there is a good chance they have an idea about what it will take to sign Paul after he opted into his previous contract to help them build this season’s team.
D’Antoni spoke Monday of his conversations with Paul and James Harden as if they were already certain to return.
Clint Capela would command $105 million over four years if a team throws a maxcontract offer sheet in his diobjective rection, but as the only center the Rockets were willing to play in the series, they would surely match that and likely already had accounted for the cost when owner Tilman Fertitta said he is prepared to pony up to keep his team together.
‘Daryl’s department’
Free agents Trevor Ariza, Luc Mbah a Moute and Gerald Green will draw varying degrees of interest that could help determine if the Rockets keep the rotation together.
“It’s way too early,” D’Antoni said after Game 7. “That’s Daryl’s department. I love each guy. So it’s hard to even be objective. That’s the upstairs. That’s their job to be cold and and do what they think is best for the team. Then once we get in the trenches, I’ll be happy with whoever we’ve got.”
The Rockets still believe they had enough. They spent the season giving themselves reason to expect a championship. That, combined with leads that reached 17 points in Game 6 and 15 in Game 7, made the loss and season’s end “devastating.”
“I feel like this team is going to hold that championship up soon,” Green said. “Unfortunately, it wasn’t this year, but we’re on the right path.”