What We Learned from the Houston Rockets' Game 7 Win
With just under a minute remaining in the Houston Rockets' 113-100 win over the Los Angeles Clippers in Game 7 of the Western Conference Semifinals on Sunday afternoon, Terrence Jones swung a no-look pass in Trevor Ariza's direction. Standing alone in the corner, Ariza proceeded to knock down the wide-open three-point shot to put the Rockets back up by double digits and all but eliminate the Clippers.
Moments later, white and red strips of confetti came falling inside the Toyota Center as Houston fans celebrated their team's first trip to the Western Conference Finals since 1997.
That the Rockets got contributions from a plethora of options on the offensive end, while also shooting the ball well from long distance, is a good sign with a series against the top-seeded Golden State Warriors—which the Rockets went 0-4 against in the regular season—on the horizon.
After sitting out the majority of the fourth quarter in Game 6—when the Rockets came back from a 19-point deficit to beat the Clippers—due to illness, James Harden led the way with 31 points Sunday. But Harden's teammates made sure he didn't have to single-handedly carry them to the next round.
Ariza added 22 points on 6-of-14 shooting, with all six of those buckets coming from beyond the arc. Dwight Howard finished with a double-double—16 points and 15 rebounds—while Josh Smith (15 points) and Corey Brewer (11 points) rounded out the rest of the double-digit scorers.
"We just had a lot of guys that played well," Rockets head coach Kevin McHale said during his postgame press conference, per the Houston Chronicle's Jonathan Feigen. "That's what it takes: It takes a lot of guys playing well to be a team."
As a team, Houston shot 12-of-30 from three-point range in Game 7. Because of Golden State's three-point shooting prowess, keep an out for the way Houston plays on the perimeter in the conference finals.
According to ESPN.com's Calvin Watkins, Rockets owner Leslie Alexander likes Houston's chances of upsetting Golden State. Well, if the Rockets hope to make this a series, they better contain the Warriors duo of Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson or keep up with them on the other end.
The Warriors led the NBA in three-point shooting percentage during the regular season by making 39.8 percent of their attempts. The Rockets, meanwhile, ranked 14th in the league at 34.8 percent.
Against the Memphis Grizzlies in the conference semifinals, Golden State shot better than 40 percent from downtown in its four wins and 23.1 percent in its two defeats.
Put simply, when the Warriors make their threes, they're an offensive juggernaut. When those attempts bounce off the rim, head coach Steve Kerr's squad is vulnerable.
Golden State is not the only team that relies heavily on the outside shot, however.
It may surprise some that the Rockets, not the Warriors, attempted 32.7 three-pointers per game during the regular season, the most in the NBA. (If you're curious, Golden State was fourth with 27 per game.)
Even in an era when dependence on three-point shots is rising throughout the league, the Rockets and Warriors stand out as team's whose success has much to do with whether their outside shots are falling or not.
In each of its four losses to Golden State during the regular season, Houston fared worse than the Warriors from downtown.
While the Splash Brothers may be just as tough to guard now as they were then, the Rockets can keep themselves in games by making threes at a relatively high rate—the way they did Sunday.
It also won't hurt their cause if Harden and Howard's supporting cast continues to raise its level of play in the Western Conference Finals.
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