SAN FRANCISCO – Sections of the sellout crowd, hearts heavy and chins drooping, went streaming toward Chase Center exits with four minutes remaining, their beloved Warriors trailing by 17 and offering nothing to inspire faith in a comeback.
It didn’t materialize in Game 6 of this first-round Western Conference series, which ended Friday night with a 115-107 loss to the Rockets, evening matters at three games apiece.
And it only gets harder for Game 7 Sunday in Houston. Going on the road to do what couldn’t be done at home results in an adverse shift of the odds.
Not that the Warriors would even consider acknowledging that.
“We’ll be all right,” Jimmy Butler III said.
“We’re packing for a week,” Stephen Curry said. “Getting on this plane to go to Texas and, hopefully, go to Minnesota right after.”
Confidence in the face of a harsh wind can border on delusion. There’s no doubt that this, Game 6, on their floor, is a fumbling of favorable conditions. The anticipation was that the Warriors would have a spirited response to being thrashed in Game 5 Wednesday in Houston. Come home, ride the energy of a roaring crowd, close out this series and start preparing for the conference semifinals against the Timberwolves.
The Rockets took all of that away. They shot better, overall and from distance. They rebounded better, forced more turnovers, pulled more loose balls and had a sharp reply to every Golden State surge. They were vastly superior in their building and appreciably better in Game 6 in a hostile environment.
“They probably had 20 points off of broken plays and getting loose balls and kicking out for 3s,” Draymond Green said. “Get loose balls and we’ll defend them way better. To beat this team, you’ve got to make second and third efforts. Last two games we have not done that.”
Which is to say the Warriors, after taking a 3-1 series lead, tailed off their intensity in Games 5 and 6. This, folks, is not a winning mentality.
And yet, after a surprisingly sloppy first half, they trailed by only five (53-48) at halftime. A third-quarter awakening allowed them to enter the fourth quarter trailing by two points, 86-84, against a team with just enough young players to breed optimism among the Warriors.
Instead, the Rockets owned the fourth from the start. Fred VanVleet, coming off a mediocre regular season and an atrocious first three games, continued his torrid shooting, getting open against a disorganized defense to drain a 3-pointer while being fouled on a scrambling closeout by Gary Payton II.
“That’s on us as a staff,” coach Steve Kerr said. “We’ve got to make sure they’re matched up. They just threw it, and we didn’t guard Van Vleet when they threw it up the floor. He knocks it down, gets the free throw.
“Felt like a game-changing play because it was a two-point game, we’re right where we need to be despite having not played well and turning it over quite a bit.”
Six seconds into the fourth, the Warriors were down six. Five minutes in, they were trailing by 12. With 4:40 remaining and having missed 10 of their first 11 shots in the quarter, they were on the ugly end of a 106-89 score.
“We struggled that first six minutes,” Curry said of the final quarter. “You have to resist the temptation to rush and force shots, if it’s me or Jimmy trying to get good looks. But use the attention they’re going to throw at us, whether it’s me running around or Jimmy driving it, to make the defense collapse and swing and find open looks.
“For the most part, we got a lot of pretty good looks in the fourth. We just didn’t make ’em.”
Curry scored 29 points, matching VanVleet for game highs. Butler scored 27 points. They didn’t get much help from their teammates. Buddy Hield, Brandin Podziemski, Moses Moody and Quinten Post – all capable shooters – finished a combined 11-of-32 from the field, including 6-of-19 from beyond the arc.
The Rockets had squelched the Warriors, silenced the crowd and taken the air out of the building. Their zone defense is stifling Golden State’s offense, and their size and athleticism aren’t going to go away.
That’s why Game 7 is more daunting than Games 5 and 6. After seeing Houston five times in the regular season and six times in this series, the Warriors still are searching for adequate solutions.
“We’ve got to stop focusing so much on them and focus on us,” Butler said. “If we do that, then we’re going to be fine. We’re not going to sit here and act like we’ve been playing our best version of basketball because we haven’t. They’ve been doing OK, but they haven’t played their best version of basketball either.”
That, for the Warriors and their fans, is particularly ominous.
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