I know it was a bad night to be blown away in the NBA playoff game, but perhaps not even your biggest loss of the night.
This is a situation where the Golden State Warriors dropped Game 2 on Wednesday to the Houston Rockets (109-94) and faced the possibility of having to move forward in the series without Jimmy Butler, who suffered pelvic competition after a fierce fall in the first quarter.
There have been some stories of Houston’s Amen Thompson undercutting Butler in a dirty way, but it was clear that it wasn’t. Warriors coach Steve Kerr said the same after the game.
“I asked our peers behind the bench and they just said they looked like they had some physicality in the rebound, and I think Thompson accidentally found himself under Jimmy based on the tag o’Wal that was happening there,” Kerr said. “We didn’t think there was anything wrong with the play. It’s just one of them.”
Butler is scheduled for an MRI, and apparently the Warriors are crossing fingers that can be played in Game 3 on Saturday in San Francisco. If he can’t, they’ll have serious problems. In fact, they have serious problems in both ways.
Jimmy Butler Injury Update: Warriors Star Gets MRI for Pelvic Conspiracy and Uncertains Game 3 Status
Brad Botkin
First of all, butlers won’t be at least 100%. Golden State is already fighting for its life against the defensive pressures of Houston’s relentless brand.
That’s not a warrior’s excuse. This is what it’s like in all playoff games so far. It looks like the 90s. And while teams like the Rockets can actually score on the right night, they probably need to win this series on the defense in the end, which can’t get any better.
It is important to point out here that the Rockets are not a bad offensive team. In fact, they were almost the top 10 units this season. There have been a lot of talk about how they don’t have scorers, and although it is true in the most traditional sense of “Go Get Me A Bucket”, they have two major talents in Alperen Sengun and Jalen Green. These two can dominate aggressively at any night.
Sengun did it in Game 1 with 26 points, but he didn’t get help.
Green did it in Game 2 with 38 and 8 3-pointers.
So don’t twist it. The Rockets are not an offensively incompetent unit that can only be won by submission. They can win that way. Heck, Golden State scored 56 points from Stephen Curry and Butler in Game 1. No one other than Sengan did anything offensively for the Rockets. But Houston can also light up you by doing what he did in Game 2.
And that’s when Butler’s potential absence becomes a potential end-of-season situation for the warriors to point out the ultra-obvious. Against this kind of defense, or hell, against any kind of playoff defense, they don’t have the firepower to catch up. Without Butler, non-curry people can’t create consistent leverage. And even curry swims against the rift.
In fact, these are not your average double team, and you’re trying to split the curry into the floor without another viable theatre. They are perfect staraitjackets. Certainly, he’s getting more intense, but again, that’s whether the ref is calling it or not calling it all over these playoffs. It won’t change. Do not change it. This is a great basketball to watch. No one in any neutral position would condemn the brand’s competition.
So it’s very easy. If Houston is scoring in Game 2 – this is a much simpler proposal without a butler on defense – the advantages of this series are very clearly reversed to the rocket, which was a major threat of even beating warriors than the majority of people would want to admit.
Without Butler, don’t forget to look at the Warriors team under 500 and sit in the lottery at the trade deadline. He changed everything. Without him, the Warriors would appear older, slow, small, and frankly weaker to rockets.
Draymond Green doesn’t like to hear that. To be fair, he is one of the few warriors who can match or even surpass Houston’s physicality. But collectively, rockets are more punished. They’re bigger, younger and more ril like they’re in the ring against a team they really hate.
The warriors are not going to disappear. This always seemed like a series that was going to go to 6-7 games. And if there is currently a silver lining, the Warriors manage to steal the advantage of the home’s court, and there’s two days before Game 3 for Butler to rest.
But for now, the Warriors have not felt bad anywhere, like the low-seeded team that won splits in the first two road games of the series.
