Rockets’ Game 5 trip seems to be pointless

HOUSTON — The Rockets are one loss from the offseason, and they seem to be in a hurry to get there. One more uninspired performance should do it.

They didn’t want to see these impressive Warriors from the get-go. That team is too sharp, too smart and too deep.

The Rockets are not, not and not.

How a couple of players reacted when a teammate made a huge shot late in a playoff game is perhaps the silliest discussion ever had about a basketball game.

Then again, said reaction to James Harden’s game-winning shot in Game 3 made it look as though a couple of Rockets were calculating how much the charter airline would charge to postpone a trip they had scheduled after a Warriors’ sweep.

Without that shot, the Rockets would not have been forced to return to Oakland for Game 5 in the woodshed otherwise known as Oracle Arena.

Of course, that jumper is the reason Houston still has a chance to win the series.

If they pull off that feat, the Rockets wouldn’t be the first team to come back from a 3-1 deficit to win a playoff series. Eight teams have done it.

In fact, the Rockets are the last team to have done so, just a year ago against the Clippers.

Of course, these Warriors are not those Clippers.

The 1994-95 Rockets are the only team to come back from 2-0 and 3-1 holes to win a playoff series.

Alas, though the team colors are the same, these brickshooting, bad-passing, slambam-don’t-give-a-damn Rockets assuredly are not those championship Rockets.

At least there was some yelling in the Rockets’ locker room immediately after Sunday’s second-half collapse, when they gave up more points in the third quarter (41) than they scored in the second half (38). Some in there still care. Point guard Jason Terry, who was forced to take on a larger role Sunday because of an injury to Patrick Beverley, was quite irritated even after the league mandated “cooldown” period.

Terry said he would draw on the experience of having been down in the playoffs before and fighting back. He wasn’t so sure about his teammates.

“It helps me, but I don’t know about these guys in this locker room,” Terry said. “I don’t know. After what I saw out there (on Sunday), it’s tough to figure out.”

The Rockets talked a lot about want-to following Sunday’s collapse, openly questioning their intensity and collective desire.

By Monday, Dwight Howard was telling teammates through the media not to even get on the flight to the West Coast if they didn’t believe Game 5 could be won.

That is an amazing area of discussion for a team that began the season talking about winning a championship.

Don’t be fooled. The Rockets say they believe they can beat the Warriors, but they know better.

The Rockets have played nearly 100 games since the beginning of the preseason. They aren’t the smartest team in the league — have you seen some of their turnovers? — but they know exactly of what they are capable.

And beating the Warriors isn’t on the can-do list.

Technically, the series isn’t over, but that’s just if you want to be technical.

(By the way, don’t be surprised if Howard picks up a couple of those to bring the 2015-16 season, and his Rockets’ career, to an end.)