3-pointers: Takeaways from Rockets' Game 3 win over Warriors - Houston Chronicle

Takeaways from the Rockets' 126-121 Game 3 win over the Golden State Warriors on Saturday night at Toyota Center:

The Rockets did everything they had said they must. And it still was nearly not enough.

That offered a reminder of how tough it is to beat the Warriors, but also a renewed sense that it could be done.

The Rockets said they had to rebound better. They outrebounded the Warriors, 55-35, allowing just seven offensive rebounds.

They said they had to play with more force offensively. They scored 52 points in the paint, 19 more than they averaged in the first two games.

Mostly, they said they had to play with greater intensity and determination. They did that from the start, even when they misfired and the Warriors got off to a hot-shooting start, to the end when the Warriors led in the final minute of regulation.

That was all just enough to get them back in the series, but they did what they had to do, and did it just as they had said they must. The Warriors had chances in a game in which they were outplayed, just as the Rockets had in Oakland when the Warriors had outplayed them. Three games into the series, the Warriors have outscored the Rockets by five points. The rematch so long anticipated just might prove worth the wait, after all.

1. Somewhere, eyes were rolling, the send button was pressed on tweets, tired narratives were repeated.

James Harden had made 2 of 9 shots to start the game. Kevin Durant, his fellow superstar, was taking off, looking every bit the best player of the playoffs as he has been deservedly called ever since he declared "I'm Kevin Durant" and went about proving what that means.

Harden, however, did just what so many doubted he could. It was not a Game 6 or 7. There is a long way to go for that, though no one else played in a Game 6 or 7 on Sunday, either. It was in nearly every other way an elimination game, or the sort of "big game" in which Harden has been said, sometimes with reason, to fall too short.

After that slow start, Harden made 12 of 23 shots. He finished with 41 points and is averaging 35 in the series. Most important, when the Rockets were staring at an 3-0 deficit that would have put them in a hole from which no team has escaped to win a series, he won the game in the final minute. Harden's 3-pointer gave the Rockets a six-point lead. After Durant was fouled on a 3, pulling the Warriors back within one shot, Harden nailed a floater to seal it.

Harden scored seven points in overtime and finished with nine rebounds and six assists to go with his scoring. In the first three games of the series, he has averaged 35. Durant, who has been the top star in the postseason in large measures because of how he also took over the first-round series, has averaged 36.7 points. Durant is 34 of 78 in the series; Harden 32 of 79. Durant has averaged 4.3 assists and 4.3 rebounds; Harden 5.3 assists and 6.3 rebounds.

This is not, however, to compare them. The only numbers that really matter are the Warriors' two wins and the Rockets' one.

Yet, at least when it comes to this season and this series so far, that the narratives and old arguments can obscure play that should be appreciated. They overshadowed the 29 points Harden scored through bloodshot squints on Tuesday. They threatened to refute the sublime play on Sunday.

Durant has been described as the dominant force of the series and certainly has dominated. He has been unstoppable. He carried the Warriors to overtime Saturday and nearly stole a win that likely would have sealed the series. Harden has played him evenly. Some would choose not to notice.

2. P.J. Tucker was fuming. He had been taken out when he picked up his fourth foul early in the second half. OK. That's understandable. He didn't enjoy watching Durant dominate, but he could accept that given his foul trouble and the job ahead.

Then the fourth quarter began and Mike D'Antoni had him still on the bench, trying to buy a couple more minutes before Tucker would be back trying to get in Durant's way any way he could.

When Durant put up 10 points in those two minutes, giving the Warriors the lead, Tucker angrily told D'Antoni and every Rockets coach that has blown a whistle this season that he needed to be on the floor.

He was right. There is no stopping Durant. One of his drives after Tucker returned, Tucker's defense on him could not have been better and Harden had come over to help late. But in the final 10 minutes of regulation and five minutes of overtime, all with Tucker on Durant, the unstoppable Warriors star, the best player of the postseason, took seven shots and hit two.

He had just two fourth-quarter points after Tucker returned to the game and just two in overtime before Austin Rivers clipped his elbow on a last-minute 3-pointer.

In the 15 minutes after Tucker returned, he scored seven points and Durant scored seven points; he had nine rebounds and the Warriors had nine rebounds.

In a game in which the Rockets were determined to crank up their effort and urgency, no one is better equipped to excel with desire than Tucker. He had shown that from the start, but never more so than when his blood was boiling after those two minutes forced to watch from the bench when Durant rolled.

Others earned the Rockets the win. There were big plays all over the place. Tucker, D'Antoni said, would not allow them to lose.

3. By the fourth quarter, Stephen Curry was staring at the rafters after missed shots. He was trudging back on defense, as if he could not quite believe what was happening. Finally, in a last maddening indignity, he got loose for a late dunk, the Rockets up five and the game down to its final 19 seconds, and it was rejected by the rim nearly as emphatically as Clint Capela had thrown back an Andre Iguodala slam attempt in the first half.

In a game in which Durant went for 46 points, Harden for 41, there were stars of sorts everywhere they turned. That was to be expected from this matchup, the clash that had been anticipated since the Warriors ended the Rockets' season a year ago and had not, for two games in Oakland, lived up to that billing.

The question is whether the Warriors' struggling stars will join them and what will happen to the series if they do.

There are different paths to excellence. The numbers Harden and Durant put up were undeniable. Harden made 14 of 32 shots, Durant 14 of 31. But Harden had seven overtime points including five in the final minute to put the Rockets over the top. Eric Gordon scored 30. Pretty easy to appreciate that, especially when he had 13 in the second quarter when the Rockets built a lead.

Yet, even beyond the scorers, the game was filled with players rising to the occasion. For a third consecutive game, Draymond Green was sensational, producing a triple-double nearly entirely off effort and savvy. Iguodala, at 35, played 41 minutes, making 6 of 9 shots, including 3 of 4 from deep, and stuffed three shots while bringing his usual defensive excellence on Harden.

For the Rockets, Capela brought all the productive energy that was conspicuously missing in Games 1 and 2. Rivers and Iman Shumpert were a combined 5 of 9 on 3s. Nenê provided a much-needed jolt in the first half. Perhaps no one among the players so often looked up stepped up quite the way Tucker had, driving the Rockets through the fourth quarter and overtime when the Warriors made just 8 of 23 shots after he returned.

Yet, for a third consecutive game, the Warriors lacked the customary production from two of their three most reliable scorers.

Klay Thompson was bottled up at the 3-point line, eventually getting going a bit from the mid-range. He had made just 6 of 16 shots for 16 points. Curry got more of his usual looks but made just 2 of 9 3-pointers, 7 of 23 shots overall, to score 17 points.

In the series' three games, they have combined to average 35 points on 37.8 percent shooting.

If one of both get going, the Rockets' task will be even more monumental. But this was the game in which they seemed likely to take off. After coming into the series limping after the six games against the Clippers and with little time to recuperate or get the usual work in, the three-day gap between games seemed likely to get Curry and Thompson going. It didn't.

The Rockets' defense had something to do with that, but this was not leaving the Jazz shooters of the Rockets' choice open to help elsewhere. This is the best-shooting backcourt in NBA history getting enough good looks to do much more. There is plenty of time to turn that around and no one would bet against them. But after a Game 3 in which so many stepped up in so many ways, how well the Warriors do what they do best will be worth watching — and likely the key — in Game 4.

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https://www.houstonchronicle.com/sports/texas-sports-nation/rockets/article/3-pointers-Takeaways-from-Rockets-Game-3-win-13820238.php

2019-05-05 06:09:00Z
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