With no home court to fall back on, 0–2 hole to Rockets seems deeper
Mike D' An toni was understandably in a good mood Thursday night after the Rockets dominated the Thunder in the fourth quarter to take a 2-0 series lead.
“All we did was defend home court,” the Rockets coach told his team. “Now we gotta go to Oklahoma City to play.”
The joke mostly fell flat. “They kind of laughed at me,” D'Antoni said.
Thunder point guard Chris Paul, whose postgame demeanor was anything but playful, certainly understood what D'Antoni was getting at.
“In a regular world,” Paul said ,“not COVID, not a bubble, we'd be going back home for two games.”
But these NBA playoffs are anything but regular.
No fans lined the chainlink fence at Will Rogers World Airport to welcome the Thunder home after two tough games. Chesapeake Energy Arena will be empty at 5 p.m. Saturday for Game 3, save for the broadcasters calling the action from 1,300 miles away.
The Thunder, as the No. 5 seed, will indeed be the “home team” for the next two games, but home remains Lake Buena Vista, Florida. Virtual Thunder fans on blue and orange video boards won't do anything to change that.
“If it was a normal series and we'd be coming out of Houston two down, people may say, `You're back home. You've got the home court.' Like, we still have to play,” Thunder coach Billy Donovan said. “The reality is we've gotta go out and play Game 3 tomorrow and we need to play better than we did yesterday.”
In NBA history, teams up 2-0 in a best-of-seven series went on to win the series 93.2% of the time.
There are recent exceptions.
The Raptors overcame a 2-0 deficit to beat the Bucks in the Eastern Conference Finals last season. The Raptors won Games 3 and 4 in Toronto.
The Thunder rattled off four straight wins after an 0-2 hole against the Spurs in the 2012 Western Conference Finals. Games 3 and 4 were in Oklahoma City.
But there's no change of scenery to spark slumping teams this postseason.
Rather than flying home to sleep in their own beds, the Thunder took a 10-minute bus ride Thursday from AdventHealth Arena to their temporary home, Disney's Grand Floridian Resort & Spa — also home to the Rockets.
“Everybody at your hotel, you see them daily,” Paul said when asked if he runs into any of his old Rockets teammates. “That's part of it. That's part of the experience.”
“It' s for sure unique ,” Thunder guard Dennis Schroder said. “This is the bubble.”
Falling behind 0-2 in a
Thunder vs. Rockets
When: 5 p.m. Saturday
Where: The Field House in Lake Buena Vista, Florida
TV: ESPN (Cox 29/HD
720, DirecTV 206, U-verse 602/1602), Fox Sports Oklahoma (Cox 37/HD 722, DirecTV 675, U-verse 751/1751)
Radio: WWLS-AM 640/98.1 FM
series requires a team to win four of the next five games to advance, but for the lower s e e d , l i k e t h e T h u n d e r , there's usually hope in the fact that three of those possible five games will be at home.
But external factors l i ke home-court advantage don't exist inside the bubble. The best team wins. “Listen, Houston played well enough to be up 2-0,” Donovan said. “They deserve credit for that. The reality is everybody's playing in the same situation. We're no different than the other teams i n the playoffs, and we're no different from Houston. I think a crowd can only do so much.”
Three things to know
• Rockets sixth man Jeff Green is averaging 18.5 points per game on 61% shooting in the series. The former Thunder forward signed with the Rockets on Feb. 18 after being waived by the Jazz.
• The Thunder shot below 45% in both games this series. Under Mike D'Antoni, the Rockets are 17-2 in the playoffs when holding opponents under 45%.
• The Thunder is outrebounding the Rockets by 8.5 rebounds per game. That's nothing new for Houston. The Rockets were outrebounded by an average of 10.7 per game in their final 27 games as they went all-in on small ball.