You know it’s been a bad night when you get blown out in an NBA playoff game and it’s probably not even your biggest loss of the night.
This the situation in which the Golden State Warriors find themselves, having dropped Game 2 to the Houston Rockets, 109-94, on Wednesday and facing the possibility of having to move forward in this series without Jimmy Butler, who suffered a pelvic contusion after a hard fall in the first quarter.
There was some talk that Houston’s Amen Thompson undercut Butler in a dirty manner, but it was pretty clear that wasn’t the case. Warriors coach Steve Kerr said as much after the game.
“I asked our guys behind the bench and they just said it looked like there was some physicality on the rebound and I think Thompson just inadvertently found himself underneath Jimmy just based on the tug-o-war that was going on there,” Kerr said. “We didn’t think there was anything wrong with the play. Just one of those things.”
Butler is scheduled for an MRI, and obviously the Warriors are crossing their fingers that he’s able to play in Game 3 on Saturday back in San Francisco. If he isn’t able to, they’re in serious trouble. Actually, they’re in serious trouble either way.
Jimmy Butler injury update: Warriors star will get MRI for pelvic contusion, status for Game 3 uncertain
Brad Botkin
For starters, Butler, at the very least, isn’t going to be 100 percent, and Golden State is already fighting for its life against Houston’s relentless brand of defensive pressure that feels even more daunting to overcome given how physically the officials are allowing these games to be played.
That’s not an excuse for the Warriors. It’s been this way across all the playoff games so far. It looks like the 90s out there, damn near every possession threatening to spill over into a fight. And for a team like the Rockets that can really score on the right night but probably ultimately has to win this series on the defensive end, this could not be setting up any better.
Here’s where it becomes important to point out that the Rockets are not a bad offensive team. In fact, they were almost a top-10 unit this season. There’s been a lot of talk about how they don’t have a go-to scorer and that is true in the most traditional “go get me a bucket” sense, but they have two major talents in Alperen Sengun and Jalen Green. Those two can dominate offensively on any given night.
Sengun did it in Game 1 with 26 points, but he didn’t get any help.
Green did it in Game 2 with 38 and eight 3-pointers.
So don’t get it twisted. The Rockets aren’t some offensively inept unit who can only win by wrestling you into submission. They can win that way. Heck, Golden State got 56 points from Stephen Curry and Butler in Game 1, and nobody other than Sengun had anything going for the Rockets offensively, and it was still a four-point game with two and half minutes remaining. But Houston can also do what it did in Game 2 and light you up.
And that’s when Butler’s potential absence, to point out the ultra obvious, becomes a potentially season-ending situation for the Warriors. Against this kind of defense, or hell, against any kind of playoff defense, they just don’t have the firepower to keep up. Without Butler, nobody outside of Curry can create consistent leverage, and even Curry is swimming against a rip tide.
Indeed, these aren’t your average double teams Curry is trying to split without another viable theat on the floor. They’re full-on straitjackets. Sure, he’s getting mauled, but again, that’s how the refs are calling it, or not calling it, across the board in these playoffs. It’s not going to change. It shouldn’t change. This is awesome basketball to watch. Nobody with any sort of neutral position is going to decry this brand of competition.
So it’s very simple: If Houston is scoring the way it did in Game 2 — which is a much easier proposition without Butler on defense — the advantage in this series flips very clearly to the Rockets, who were always a bigger threat to beat the Warriors, even at full strength, than the vast majority of people seemed willing to admit.
Remember, without Butler, you are looking at Warriors team that was under-.500 and sitting on the lottery line at the trade deadline. He changed everything. Without him, the Warriors look old, slow, small and, frankly, kind of weak against the Rockets.
Draymond Green won’t like hearing that. And to be fair, he is one of the few Warriors who can match, or even exceed, Houston’s physicality. But collectively, the Rockets are way more punishing. They’re just bigger, younger and more riled up to be in the ring against a team they seem to genuinely dislike.
The Warriors aren’t going to go away. This always seemed like a series destined to go six or seven games. And if there are any silver linings right now, the Warriors did manage to steal home-court advantage and there are two days before Game 3 for Butler to rest up.
But right now, suffice to say, the Warriors are not feeling anywhere near as good as a lower-seeded team that earned a split in the first two road games of a series usually would.
