The Houston Rockets did not lose the Western Conference finals to the Golden State Warriors in Game 3 on Saturday night.
Yes, they were blown out by 35, and going down 3-0 in the best-of-7 series means with near-absolute certainty they will exit at the NBA's semi-final stage. But Game 3 isn't what did them in.
The Warriors are, by an increasing array of measurements, looking like a historically great team. It would have surprised no one to learn before this series that Houston would suffer at least one heavy defeat, if not necessarily by 35.
No, the Rockets lost this series in Games 1 and 2, when they had a chance to steal a game from the Warriors but just couldn’t quite get it done.
To beat Golden State four times in seven, you have to be nearly perfect and probably more than a little bit lucky. Houston were in only small parts lacking in both in the series openers. That was all it took.
James Harden’s brief slip in concentration on the final possession of Game 2 was the difference in a one-point game. The Rockets’ inability to keep the Warriors down with a 16-point lead in the second quarter of Game 1 was the difference then.
A little bit unlucky. A little bit imperfect. Before Saturday night, they had played Golden State competitively, no small feat against a team that outscored opponents by over 10 points per game in the regular season.
In Game 3 though they were finally overwhelmed, as Harden’s impossible shots stopped falling and keeping up defensively with the Warriors’ clockwork offence became too exhausting.
It didn’t feel in the first quarter like Golden State were on their way to a 35-point thrashing. Stephen Curry didn’t especially seem primed for a 40-point night.
Dwight Howard looked authoritative, throwing down a couple of hard-work dunks. Harden was off but contributing. Defensively they were forcing the Warriors to miss a few (12-of-26 as a team) and Curry, the MVP, was only 1-of-2 with three points.
And yet at the end of the opening period the scoreboard showed the Rockets already down 12.
The Warriors can simply beat you in too many ways. Precisely in tandem defensively and precisely in synch offensively, at their best they are irrepressible. Struggle through an off night when they’re at their best and you lose by 35, even if you’re the Houston Rockets (who had the third best record in basketball this season).
On Saturday one of Golden State’s starters, Harrison Barnes, shot 0-of-9 and scored zero points. Defensive anchor Andrew Bogut fouled out and played only 20 minutes. Klay Thompson slumped to a 2-of-8 night from three. And, again, they won by 35.
The Warriors executed their simplest form of devastation – let Steph Curry run wild.
Darting off the ball for open threes, pulling up off the dribble to drain long-range shots, probing toward the rim for scoops high off the backboard, slithering into the key for floaters, even boxing out Howard – eight inches taller than him – for a rebound and drawing a foul on the put-back. The MVP did it all, as he so often does.
Curry finished with 40 points, shot 7-of-9 from three and dished seven assists. There was nothing Houston could do.
There maybe was never anything Houston could do, broadly speaking.
The ESPN stats website FiveThirtyEight's Elo Rating catch-all measurement had the 2014/15 Golden State Warriors (1773 composite rating) as the fourth-greatest team of all-time, and that was before Saturday night's evisceration of the Rockets or accounting for a possible victory in the NBA Finals.
They have a chance to reach a peak of 1800-plus and join only the 1985/86 Boston Celtics and Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls of 1995/96 and 96/97 at such a height. The highest peak any non-title-winning team have reached was 1765, achieved perhaps ominously by LeBron James’s 2008/09 Cleveland Cavaliers.
Put simply, the Warriors are in rarefied territory. The Rockets are a very good team, and James Harden is a great player who has indeed played great in two of the three games of this series.
But by Saturday Houston’s chance to put Golden State on their heels, it turned out, had already come and gone – they just couldn’t quite get the right combination of good play and good luck at quite the right time to capitalise on it.
There is, the Rockets have been unfortunate to discover, no room for anything less against these Warriors.
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