In Utah, series starts for real
The Rockets won both playoff games in Salt Lake City last season and split the regular-season games in Vivint Smart Home Arena. But immediately after taking a 2-0 series lead, they reminded themselves that the Jazz will pose a much greater challenge at home than in the two blowouts in Toyota Center.
“We have to be even more focused now,” Rockets center Clint Capela said. “(We’re) telling ourselves that it’s a new series over there. We have two games there. We know it’s going to be hard. We beat them last year, so we know that they’re not going to let it go.”
The Rockets went 31-10 at home in the regular season despite losing their first four home games. They were just 22-19 on the road with the Jazz 29-12 at home.
“I just hope we haven’t let the foot off the pedal yet,” Rockets guard Austin Rivers said. “But honestly, the series starts now. All we did is take care of home court, like we were supposed to do. That’s why you fight to get home court. You’re supposed to win these games. These games don’t mean anything if we go to Utah and lose both of those.
“At the end of the day, it’s just great, we’re up 2-0, but we have two more to get, and we have to go do our job.”
To James Harden, the concern was not so much that the Rockets would be overconfident. The challenge will be to have the same confidence if the Jazz play much better on their homecourt.
“Our swag, our confidence is where it needs to be,” Harden said. “We need to bring that to the road. We all know how tough it is to win in Utah. We’ve done it last year. I think we’re all focused, we’re locked in to where defensively we’re engaged. Granted, they didn’t shoot the ball well from the 3, but they’ll make some of those at home. We just can’t let their runs distract us from what our overall goal is.
“The series starts now. Now, we go on the road and we have to keep that same energy, especially on the defensive end.”