Houston’s got some problems
The Houston Rockets have plenty of things to fix after squandering their coveted home-court advantage in the Western Conference finals.
Tops on their list: limiting turnovers, eliminating open threes and making things tougher on the Golden State Warriors – particularly Kevin Durant.
“Kevin Durant and (Stephen) Curry, they’re good. So they’re going to make” shots, Houston coach Mike D’Antoni said. “Our head can’t explode that they go one-on-one and make shots … you have to be able to absorb some of their greatness; at the same time, don’t make the mental errors that we did. That would accumulate for 15, 20 points, and that’s the difference in the game.”
Some almost sounds like the Rockets will have to play almost perfect beat the Warriors. They wouldn’t go as far as to say that, but James Harden, who scored 41 in Game 1, did say that at this level the margin for error gets razor thin.
“It’s the (conference) finals,” he said. “There’s four teams here for a reason. Obviously these four teams have done great things all year. You can’t make the same mental mistakes like you’re in a regular season.”
There were plenty of Rockets miscues in Game 1.
They coughed up the ball 13 times on Monday and the Warriors outscored the Rockets, 18-3, on fast break points en route to a 119-106 victory. Klay Thompson scored 28 points and made 6 of 15 three-point attempts on a night Harden lamented that about 10 of those looks were wide-open. Thompson’s performance came on top of Durant scoring 37 points, mostly by knocking down long two-pointers when he was matched up against smaller defenders.
That said, what the Rockets won’t do in Game 2 on Wednesday night is change what they’ve done all year and what led to them winning a franchiserecord 65 games in the regular season to earn the top-seed.
“We are who we are, and we’re pretty good at it,” D’Antoni said. “We can’t get off who we are. Embrace it. Just be a better (version) of who we are and don’t worry if somebody else solves the puzzle a different way … we’ve got to play at our strengths.”
Suns win the lottery: The Phoenix Suns won the No. 1 pick in next month’s NBA draft.
It’s the first time the Suns will have the chance to make the first overall selection.
The Suns had the right combination of ping pong balls pop up for them at the draft lottery, a reward of sorts after a season where Phoenix had the NBA’s worst record at 21-61.
Sacramento will pick No. 2 and Atlanta got the No. 3 pick – both of them moving up to get there. The top three spots were determined by the lottery, and then spots 4-14 fell in line of reverse order of record.
Arizona freshman Deandre Ayton is widely expected to be a strong candidate to go No. 1, and since he was at the lottery he now has a sense for how his future might play out. Duke’s Marvin Bagley III was also in attendance, as was Oklahoma’s Trae Young.