This one was embarrassing, and painful. It was like watching a chess master play a person who’d maybe heard of chess, but never played it before. Steve Kerr would be in the role of grandmaster, and Ime Udoka the role of someone who just learned of the existence of the wimpy game of chess an hour ago.
The Warriors came into this game barely above .500, with Steph Curry, Jimmy Butler, Kristaps Porzingis, Moses Moody and Will Richard all out with injuries or illness. Alperen Sengun and Jabari Smith were
thought to be possible scratches with illness and injury respectively, but no, they played. They played 79 minutes tonight, in fact. Most of those minutes were not especially good. They both looked hindered, as Alpies 8-20, 7ast, 7rb, 5to performance (with a few clutches makes late to improve things) and Jabari’s even more dismal 0-8, 11rb, 2st, 5to both looked like players who were trying to “gut it out” for the sake of the team. At no point in this game did either of them look especially good, or even especially playable, but play they did. It was all very manly.
Arrayed against Ime Udoka’s preferred starting lineup of Amen Thompson, Tari Eason, Kevin Durant, Jabari Smith and Alperen Sengun were arrayed two lauded NBA players, with a combined age of 75 between them in Al Horford and Draymond Green, Guy Santos, De’Anthony Melton and Brandin Podziemski. One might be forgiven for thinking that this would be an easy Rockets win. After all the Rockets had two days off, and were playing at home.
No one considered just how badly the Rockets could be outplayed, outsmarted, and generally outclassed by a better coach, in Steve Kerr and his ragtag Warrior lineup.
This game was in a word, humiliating.
Because the Rockets don’t really run an offense, and because they don’t really change up defenses all that much, because they make few in game adjustments, and seem to have no contingency plan other than “try harder”, the Warriors essentially operated inside Ime Udoka’s “Decision Loop” all night. That means the Warriors generally knew what the Rockets would do before they did it, and how the Rockets would react to essentially every situation.
The number of layups and wide open shots this largely no-name bunch of Warriors generated was astonishing. Almost no one in the Rockets starting lineup looked good. Kevin Durant looked like a bullfighter without a cape, so often did he get passed by on defense. Alperen Sengun looked sick, and was manhandled by Al Horford. Tari Eason barely seemed present. He managed a pedestrian 4-10 shooting, 5rbs, 2ast. Jabari Smith had maybe one of the worst games I’ve seen him play, just a series of bad decisions on both offense and defense, and nothing he shot looked like going in, except a couple of free throws. Amen Thompson played hard, and good defense, but he, too, got beaten by the quick, decisive, attacks mounted over and over.
Durant was 8-16, with 6rbs, 3ast, and 3TOs. He even added 4stls and a block. He’s usually good for scoring, even if his defense isn’t great, and tonight it was far from great.
One might think that an extreme smallball lineup, like the Golden State one tonight, might have trouble with quick, purposeful motion, clever attack angles, and generally a read and react offense that somehow knew how to both read, and react, despite the presence of some fairly marginal NBA players. One would be correct. It did have trouble. The solution? There wasn’t one.
On offense the Rockets looked, generally terrible. They barely broke 20 points in the first quarter, They had 27 in the 2nd and 37 in the third, followed by a putrid 19 in the 4th, as they blew an NBA leading 12th fourth quarter lead.
What happened in the third quarter? Reed Sheppard and Clint Capela, basically. Reed played 37 minutes (in an OT game) scored 37 points on 12-19 shooting, 6-12 3pt, 3rbs, 6ast, 3to. He was targeted on defense, but it should be noted, when he played most of his minutes the Rockets outscored the Warriors and took a lead. Capela, despite being required by a law of the universe or something, to play no more than 18 minutes, played 12. This in a game where Sengun and Smith both looked bad. He, along with Reed Sheppard, was +11 in his minutes. The only other Rocket in plus territory was Amen Thompson. This very much matches the eye test from this game.
The Rockets notional offense looks far better with Reed Sheppard in the game, pretty much always at this point. But as the smallest Rocket on the court, he does surrender points, but a point prevented is worth 10 times a point scored, or something or other Ime might have mumbled at some point.
Anyway, the Rockets almost gave this one away in the 4th, but we saw some clutch baskets from Sengun that dragged this miserable affair to overtime. They then proceeded to get outworked, and out thought, in the OT, as Udoka relied on his dubious starters, and we saw things like the Rockets getting fouled, without a quick shot attempt with the Warriors up three, and an inability to make a deliberate foul with some time remaining. The thinking, and execution, were both awful.
The Rockets have once again failed to reach NBA average scoring against a team with a (barely) winning record. Even with overtime.
I think anyone who reads my writing here regularly knows that I think that the Rockets have basically been winning through sheer talent and effort. That high effort, low strategy, style seems to be catching up with them. The team appeared gassed, flat, slow, despite the extra day off. The Warriors just seemed quicker to do everything, and moreover understood what the Rockets were doing better than the Rockets.
The team plays again tomorrow against the 30-33 Portland Trailblazers. Looks like an easy win, right? So did this game.
