Team was built just for this moment
HOUSTON — If not now, when?
This is the moment that the remade Rockets were built for.
This is the shot that James Harden, Daryl Morey and Co. have waited three long years for.
Even ground against the superpower Warriors. Homecourt advantage with the NBA Finals on the line. Confidence, momentum and swagger for the locals in red, with Kevin Durant, Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, Draymond Green, Steve Kerr and Co. regrouping on the other side.
To quote a man waiting to board a cross-country flight — and publicly discussing the state of these suddenly tight Western Conference finals — inside San Francisco International Airport early Wednesday morning: “Pick ’em.”
Pick ’em in what’s now a best-of-three series against the reigning NBA champs — an All-Star-loaded team that 99 percent of the country sided with before Game 1?
Pick ’em after blowing that opener at home, then getting torched by 41 points in Game 3 at Oracle Arena?
Pick ’em versus the team that added Durant, the greatest player of the current era not named LeBron James, after winning 73 of 82 games?
Heck, yes — these 65-win Rockets will take those odds. Especially with Game 5 in downtown Houston on Thursday night and a potential season-extending/ending Game 7 back at Toyota Center.
If not now, when?
“It makes me feel alive. … You kind of coach all year for this, or even your whole career to get here and get as close as you can,” said head coach Mike D’Antoni, who acknowledged he didn’t sleep much after the Rockets’ 95-92 Game 4 win, but also couldn’t wait to wake up Wednesday. “It’s great competition. It’s against one of the best teams ever. Like I’ve always said, I like our locker room. I like what’s in there. I’m just proud of them and what they do every night. Whatever happens, happens.”
I loved everything about that statement — and so much of what the proud but laid-back D’Antoni has said the past two years — but I don’t fully believe those philosophical words.
I saw the man, who hasn’t guided a team in the NBA Finals, prowling the sidelines and fiercely pumping his hands inside ear-splitting Oracle Arena on Tuesday night, when his Rockets twice overcame 12-point deficits.
I know how much D’Antoni — Chris Paul, P.J. Tucker, Trevor Ariza, Harden, Morey … all of them — really want this.
You know everything it took for the Rockets just to get to this point — Dwight Howard, Kevin McHale, last season’s Game 6 meltdown against the Spurs, best regular season in franchise history — and how rarely these basketball moments have occurred in this city since 1995.
Basically, never.
“Us against half the world,” a joking D’Antoni said, when asked about almost everyone in the world doubting his Rockets.
“Still got to knock (the Warriors) out. They’re not done for any stretch of the imagination,” he said. “But we showed a lot of people, when we’re down 12-0 in the fourth game, a lot of people got hurt jumping off the bandwagon. They were scrambling. And I would have been one of those guys scrambling, too.”
The best roster that Morey has constructed spent all season fighting for the West’s No. 1 seed — every little advantage counts when you’re playing the once-unbeatable Warriors — then lost it in Game 1. The Rockets have trailed 1-0 and 2-1 in this series. And in a Game 4 that all of Harden’s previous Rockets teams would have lost, D’Antoni utilized just seven players to overcome a videogame third quarter from Curry. If not now, when?
“The fifth game is really, really important,” said D’Antoni, the 67-year-old who fell two wins short of the NBA Finals with Phoenix in 2006 but has not been closer. “I don’t know what the percentage is. I’m sure Daryl could tell you what the percentage is, and I don’t even want to know. But, yeah, as they do, we’ve got to grab this one.”
The time is now.