The Warriors very, very much didn’t want this to happen, but good sense and many years of playoff perspective told them that bad things were possible on Wednesday in Houston. And sometimes you just have to quit while you’re 29 points behind.
The Warriors knew that the Rockets would play with every ounce of fight and desperation to avoid elimination, which is how it unfolded in Houston’s 131-116 Game 5 victory. The Warriors knew that, after playing so well to grab a 3-1 lead in this series, they might not have their “A” game in this one. Which they 5,000% did not.
And most importantly, the Warriors fully understood that a loss like this absolutely isn’t the end of the world. It’s a little embarrassing and it might have given the Rockets a big boost of confidence, but the Warriors know that they can and should survive something like this because they’ve done it before.
If they’re the better team, they’ll close out this series in Game 6 on Friday at Chase Center. If they can’t win that one, they’ll have another shot in Game 7 on Sunday back in Houston. Losing Game 5 — and Steve Kerr pulling the starters halfway through the third quarter — is just part of the adventure. That’s what a great team knows. That’s what a great team does.
For instance, three years ago, in their second-round matchup against the higher-seeded Grizzlies, the Warriors went up 3-1, traveled to Memphis for Game 5 (which Kerr missed after a positive COVID test) with a chance to end the series, and trailed by 27 at halftime (just like in Wednesday’s game). The Warriors trailed by 52 at the end of three quarters, saw acting coach Mike Brown pull the starters six minutes into the second half, and ended up losing 134-95.
Then in Game 6 back at Chase, the Warriors made a few adjustments (mainly, switching Kevon Looney into the starting lineup for Jonathan Kuminga) and finished off the series. Oh, by the way, that team also went on to beat Dallas in the Western Conference finals and Boston in the NBA Finals to claim the fourth title of the Stephen Curry era.
This is a different kind of team than that one — Jimmy Butler, all by himself, changes so much of the mood and methods. But obviously, Curry, Draymond Green, and Kerr are still around, and I suspect they’ve been thinking about the comparisons to the 2022 Memphis series for a while now.
“Yeah, similar vibe,” Kerr told reporters in Houston on Wednesday night. “Young team on their home floor trying to stay alive, they came out and threw haymakers at us. They made every shot in the first quarter. So we got what we deserved.”
The Warriors clearly have some things to figure out. After spending much of this series in a shooting swoon, the Rockets’ Amen Thompson slashed through the Warriors’ malleable defense and made 8 of his 12 shots for 25 points. Fred VanVleet went 8 for 13 for 26 points and Dillon Brooks made 7 of his 13 shots for 24 points.
Also, the Rockets’ two-center zone defense has been mucking up the Warriors’ offense for a few games now — taking away Curry’s space and putting extreme pressure on the Warriors’ secondary scorers. On Wednesday, Curry was held to only 13 points, Butler had a very quiet 8-point night on 2-for-10 shooting, and nobody else stepped forward while the game was still competitive.
But the Warriors fought through everything in their Game 4 victory at Chase because Butler was superlative in the fourth quarter and they got some key baskets from Brandin Podziemski and Buddy Hield. And the Warriors — again, if they’re the better team — should be able to do it again on Friday.
“We’re fine,” Butler said. “Our confidence isn’t going to waver any. We’re going to start out better, we’re going to play a better overall game. Because we know how good we are as a team as a unit, we know how good our players are as individuals.”
They did it in 2022 with different supplementary players, against a different team, and when Curry and Draymond were three years younger. But the Warriors are not shocked to be here. They should not get demoralized by this loss.
Being up 3-2 and getting Game 6 at Chase are the key facts. Not much else should matter if the Warriors make those two things matter. Because they’ve lived through this before.
“There’s definitely something you could look back on, part of the journey,” Curry said. “But that’s all well and great to talk about, you have to go do something about it on the court. (What) we talk about in our group is trying to do this for the first time together. I love that challenge because we have the opportunity to write our own story and how we bounce back. We’ve had a pretty resilient group over the last two months and it has to show on Friday.”
The benefit of Kerr calling it off early is that Curry played only 23 minutes in this game (he played only 25 in that Memphis game), Butler played 25, and Draymond played just 18. And Kerr might’ve been tempted, but he never made a move to put any of them back in even after the Warriors’ reserves made a mighty fourth-quarter push, got the deficit down to 13 points several times, and forced Rockets coach Ime Udoka to put his starters back in. He was right — once you tell 30-something veterans that their night is over and they’ve rested for more than a quarter, you would be at high risk of injury if you put them back in.
No, the long play was absolutely the right one. The foundational figures got some extra rest before the flight back to the Bay Area and the prep work for Game 6. Plus, Moses Moody, Pat Spencer, Kevin Knox, Trayce Jackson-Davis, and Braxton Key had earned the right to keep going.
Moody, who was a rookie on that 2022 team, had another interesting comparison to make — Game 4 of those Western Conference finals, after the Warriors had taken a 3-0 lead but got smashed early in Dallas only to see Moody, Kuminga, Nemanja Bjelica, and Damion Lee make it close at the end. Then the Warriors finished off the Mavericks back at Chase in Game 5.
“And same thing, they were up by a lot, we came in, me, JK, Belly, D-Lee, Juan [Toscano-Anderson for a few seconds] maybe, I forget who else,” Moody said. “They brought their starters back, timeout, they had to fight for the win. And we walked them off the next game. So let’s finish that story the same way.”
There’s no guarantee it will happen exactly like that on Friday, of course. Maybe the Warriors aren’t the better team in this series. Maybe the Rockets got their swagger back on Wednesday.
But the Warriors are wise enough to know that whatever happened in Game 5 is history now. They’ve still got two chances to finish this off. And their own history says that they’ve got a great chance to do it.