No home advantage? No problem as bubble hasn’t been any trouble
Apparently, the Rockets don’t need chants from a Toyota Center crowd to play great defense.
After the first two games of their first-round playoff series with the Thunder, the Rockets have told themselves that little has been accomplished.
They did what they are supposed to do, they’re saying to each other.
See, historically, as a reward for its superior regular-season play, the
higher seeded team, ostensibly the team with the best record, gets to play the first two games of a best-of-seven playoff series at home.
The first-strike edge with familiar beds and a favorable crowd is often a deciding factor in a matchup.
In 2020, said advantages don’t exist.
NBA bubble life has erased it all. Every team is playing on the road in Orlando, with no home crowd on hand thanks to coronavirus precautions.
The Rockets’ 15- and 13-point wins in the first two games against Oklahoma City don’t fit an it-is-what-it-is cliché. Don’t tell the Rockets that. Coach Mike D’Antoni says the team laughed at him when he made the point, but soon after, P.J. Tucker was running the company line.
“We haven’t done anything yet,” Tucker said after Thursday’s 111-98 victory. “We defended home court. Now we gotta go to O-K City and win.
“We gotta have the same attitude. We can’t let up. We gotta stick with it. As soon as we lose one (game), then we’re right back to square one.”
Home court? Um, all of the games are on the same floor, in front of the same virtual crowd.
No NBA player goes to Oklahoma City unless he is contractually obligated via trade or game schedule.
The mind game the Rockets are playing is OK, see? They want to convince themselves the playoffs are the playoffs. Nothing has changed.
The rims are 10 feet high, the court is 94 feet in length, there is such a thing as home-court advantage, and golly gee whiz, according to the NBA playoff tiebreaker rules, the Rockets have it over the Thunder.
Standard NBA playoff swings that result from a change of scenery and a polar opposite crowd will not be a factor this year.
If a team flips the tables from an 0-2 hole, it will be because it played better, not because it gained an extra boost from home cooking.
To keep OKC from rebounding, the Rockets must keep doing what they have done thus far, especially on the defensive end.
The Rockets have a goal of limiting opponents to 24 points in a quarter. Yeah, dreams.
They did that in the third and fourth quarters, holding OKC to 39 second-half points. That level of defensive effort will produce wins.
Houston played so well defensively that it didn’t seemed to be fazed by its run of 15 straight missed 3-pointers at the end of the second quarter.
Many of these Rockets were in uniform the night they missed a record 27 straight from beyond the arc a few years ago in a playoff loss to Golden State.
“When we’re not making shots, we’ve gotta find ways to win, and I keep saying it’s going to be on the defensive end,” said
James Harden, who had a relatively quiet game for him with just 21 points.
Harden’s pedestrian evening was hardly noteworthy. The Rockets count on several players to consistently deliver, others to deliver on occasion. They hope their balance of depth will result in an impressive playoff showing.
Game 1 was a Jeff Green party as he tallied 22 points, the third most in his 61-game playoff career. In Game 2, Green was one of seven players to score in double figures.
Austin Rivers was all but invisible in the opener, making just one shot in 19 minutes of action. In this one, he dropped 11 points in a four-minute stretch from late in the first quarter through the 8:55 mark of the second.
He capped that run with a nasty dunk off a drive down the lane after shaking Chris Paul at the 3-point line.
Like a musician in a jamming band, Rivers put on a show during his moment in the spotlight, then sat back and played along with the beat.
The Rockets don’t need every player on the roster to lead the way. They’re just looking for them to be on key and hit the notes when it’s their time to shine.
It matters not whether the stage is in Orlando, Houston or Oklahoma City.
Good basketball is winning basketball.
Defense travels, even if it doesn’t have to.