It wasn't pretty in the Rockets' 95-85 loss to the Golden State Warriors in game one. Payne & Pendergast react to the loss here.
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00:00Which is what? I felt like I was watching Taxi Driver last night watching the Rockets.
00:03I'm like, oh, hey, you know what? Maybe this Taxi Driver's just trying to do something.
00:08Oh, no, he just sucks. Oh, the Rockets.
00:11Hey, how many times did Kevin Durant pop into your little brain last night?
00:15Three or four. I'm not going to lie.
00:17I mean, as they were trying to score buckets in the half court,
00:20and they're just dribbling blindly into traffic and turning the ball over
00:24and chunking up turnaround contested threes and things like that.
00:28No, several times he crashed. And let's start there.
00:33That's one of several things that had me very angry this morning about this game last night.
00:37They ruined Dingus Day. The Rockets ruined Dingus Day.
00:41They did. They did.
00:42You shoot 30% from a floor, 20% from three.
00:46The worst thing about that game, Sean, is that the one thing they can hang their hat on,
00:52the rebounds, they absolutely dominated the glass.
00:56Good for you. Good for you.
00:57You can't shoot, but you can't shoot.
00:59No. No.
01:00Well, you can't. It's not even that you can't shoot.
01:02And credit to Golden State on this.
01:05And those of you just, honestly, there's probably some of you waking up because the game went so late.
01:0995-85, the final score.
01:12The Warriors beat the Rockets in game one.
01:14In a game that I'm still struggling on how to feel about because I'm so frustrated
01:18with just the complete junior high offense that gets run by this team while giving credit to Golden State for being a big part of that.
01:25And yet, at the same time, you know, they're down four with about five, six minutes to go in the game.
01:31And they could not be playing any worse offensively.
01:34Steph Curry could probably not, against the Rockets, not be playing any better offensively.
01:39And Jimmy Butler is pretty good, too.
01:40And, you know, they're still in this thing at that point.
01:43They reeled it.
01:43They reeled it in.
01:44I mean, they had a lead for the majority of the first quarter.
01:48They reeled it back five different times to make it a close game.
01:53Yeah.
01:54I guess that's why I keep telling myself, and you reminded me this morning when I looked at the show prep,
02:00that, all right, all right, I don't do what every single person always does,
02:04which is after game one of a playoff series, freak out and act like it could never be any different.
02:09But the Golden State did not play well either.
02:12They're not.
02:13These circus shots by Steph Curry, even though he makes more circus shots than anybody else,
02:19as Kevin Harlan called one of the shots, geometrically impossible.
02:23I know exactly which one he's talking about, too.
02:25It's that one in the corner.
02:27Yeah.
02:27Yeah.
02:28It was brutal.
02:31And Golden State didn't look impressive either.
02:35And yet they've got three guys on their team that have over 100 games of playoff experience.
02:41The Rockets on the floor last night had zero people with 100 games or more of playoff experience.
02:46And when you're holding the game in the 70s going into the fourth quarter, that's ugly basketball.
02:52And you had a chance, you know, just by shooting better than 30%.
02:56Yeah.
02:57By Van Vliet, just please show up.
03:00Yeah, show up.
03:00Make your easy shots.
03:02What the hell are you doing?
03:03Yeah, that was, I think, the most frustrating thing for me, Seth.
03:07And we'll break this game down a ton today on the show.
03:10And they're not back at it until Wednesday here for game two.
03:12That, obviously, now is a must win.
03:15The most frustrating thing for me is that all the narratives that everybody who wasn't picking
03:20Rockets going into this game, all the reasons people like you, me, and a lot of people in
03:24Houston that have watched this team all year, including watching them two weeks ago, dominate
03:28this very Golden State team, that a lot of those narratives came exactly true.
03:34You know, the Golden State Warriors had two guys that when they needed baskets, they could
03:38go get baskets for them.
03:39Jimmy Butler and Steph Curry.
03:41And even this Podzemski character was going and getting buckets at times in this game, too.
03:46The Rockets didn't have that.
03:48The Rockets looked completely discombobulated in the half court.
03:52I was told this was the reason we're paying Fred Van Vliet $43 million a year is for leadership
03:57and the ability to kind of floor general the Rockets into some hoops.
04:01They were, even when they were scoring, Seth, it was all off of second chance points and
04:07like unsustainable things like Alperin Shengun, step back three, stuff like that.
04:12I kept looking over at Amy, even after made baskets, I'm like, this isn't real basketball.
04:16They're missing shots.
04:18They're getting second and third chances at it, which is great.
04:20But you cannot grit and grind and second chance your way, even to the Western Conference
04:27Finals.
04:27Forget about an NBA Finals.
04:29Like, you've got to, at some point, you've got to get open shots and you've got to knock
04:34down open shots.
04:35And I think the biggest disappointment to me is the fact that Jalen Green's playoff debut
04:40was such a disaster.
04:42He went three for 15 and it was because he looked like a rookie at times out there.
04:46Just dribbling into traffic, out of control.
04:49I would have left him on the bench in the fourth quarter of this game.
04:52And we give him credit for some of the maturing and advancement that he's made this year.
04:56A lot of the maturing and advancement.
04:58But now you look at him, I'm going into this game.
05:00His last three games, he was two for seven April 9th.
05:04He was three for 10 versus the Lakers.
05:07He was 0 for 7 versus Denver.
05:09And then he just absolutely no-shows in the playoffs.
05:13Yeah, we can get, in hindsight, go back and say that, yeah, okay, your strategy of resting
05:18these guys, Udoka, and being sure they're nice and fresh, it worked in winning the rebounding
05:23battle.
05:24And yeah, it did 0 to help them actually turn into any kind of a shooting team.
05:28Yeah, so there's Jalen Green.
05:32I thought, well, then we can get into the free throw shooting, which was just a disaster.
05:36Ahmed Thompson misses the first two free throws of the game and kind of set the course.
05:39Did they break 50?
05:40No, no, yeah, they did.
05:41They were Anthony Richardson at the free throw line.
05:4211 to 20.
05:43Yeah, 11 to 20.
05:44They were 55% from the free throw.
05:46Who would you take in a clutch moment?
05:48Anthony Richardson to complete a 15-yard out or any given rocket to shoot a free throw?
05:55To make a free throw, that it's a debate, I think, illustrates the exact point you're
05:58trying to make.
06:00Yeah, it's, yeah, it wasn't good.
06:02I thought the, I thought the key sequence, because they, I mean, this, we're sitting here
06:07complaining, and we should.
06:08They lost, and they looked terrible offensively in doing so.
06:11They played pretty well defensively.
06:13Steph Curry was just making shots where, you know, I was watching the Space City feed,
06:18and there were so many shots Steph was making where Ryan Hollins afterwards was going,
06:22and can't defend it any better than that, which is true.
06:25Like, he's got a guy in his face, and he's just doing Steph things.
06:29I thought the key sequence in the game, Steph, the sequence that kind of put the game away
06:33for the Warriors was it's 79-75 somehow.
06:38Somehow the Rockets are only down by four.
06:40The refs miss a ball knocked out of bounds at about midcourt that clearly, on replay,
06:47bounced off of Draymond Green's hand.
06:49Again, Rockets couldn't challenge it, because Eme lost his challenge, the trip down the floor
06:53right before that.
06:55And what I thought was a good challenge, that play could have gone either way.
06:58It was an Ahmed Thompson block, got called to block, thought it was a charge.
07:02I thought it might get overturned.
07:03It didn't.
07:03You don't have any challenges.
07:05So the refs miss a call on Draymond.
07:08The Warriors inbound the ball, and Steph hits one of those shots we're talking about.
07:11Now it's 82-75.
07:13And the Rockets actually get stops, three straight possessions.
07:17Yeah.
07:17And they do nothing on the other end.
07:19The one thing they did on the other end was get second chances on each trip down the floor.
07:24But there were Fred Van Vliet three-pointers that were climbing.
07:28Fred Van Vliet shot a pull-up three-pointer off of a turnover.
07:31Like, what is going on?
07:32On a night where he couldn't make anything, Jabari's turning the ball over.
07:35I don't blame him.
07:36He had a pretty decent game.
07:37But that was the sequence, because then ultimately, the Rockets eventually did get it
07:41back to four after that.
07:42But then the Warriors came down, hit like two threes, and it was over.
07:45So that was the sequence there where I thought they really had a chance to do something.
07:49They had the Warriors kind of scrambling offensively a little bit.
07:52So are you, for Wednesday, more optimistic that the Rockets were actually in a game where
07:57they played like garbage?
07:58I mean, utter garbage offensively.
08:00Or are you feeling like this is what this series is going to be like?
08:03I feel like this is what this series is going to be like, and that's where I'm trying to
08:07remind myself.
08:08I was trying to figure out exactly when the game broke 70.
08:14The score was 69-62, Golden State, with 11 minutes and seven seconds left.
08:19Golden State is, they're very, very much better with Jimmy Butler out there, but it's not like
08:25they're a great NBA team.
08:27And the Rockets were doing a lot of the things that they're supposed to be doing.
08:32They held the game to below the 70s going well into the fourth quarter, and you've just
08:42got to have some semblance of credible shooting.
08:46Now, the biggest thing that worries me is just that, man, when the Warriors in the past
08:50have just figured out a way to make life really difficult for Jalen Green, the Rockets simply
08:55don't have enough other guys that can actually fill in the spaces.
08:59And all they have to do is just fill in the spaces, just play competent basketball offensively,
09:05and yes, you're very much in that game.
09:07So yeah, I'll talk myself into optimism within the next 36 hours.