Rockets Down 0-1 - What Went Wrong in the Loss? - video Dailymotion

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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.

Transcript

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.

02:28It 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.

Rockets Down 0-1 - What Went Wrong in the Loss?

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