As the most analytically obsessed team in the league, the Houston Rockets have a number for everything. Three-point shots. Shots at the rim. Free throws. They ruthlessly hunt the most mathematically supported shots, avoid inefficiency at all costs, and they don’t stray from the fundamental belief that these numbers, when applied over time and without emotion, will eventually add up to an NBA championship — or at least to beating the Warriors and then seeing what happens from there.
They’re getting pretty damn close to being right.
The Rockets beat Golden State for the second straight time in Game 4 on Monday, 112-108, to even their second-round series at two games apiece. They again, for the most part, played by their book. James Harden launched 17 3-pointers. Houston as a team put up 50 threes — 17 more than Golden State. Even though the Rockets only made 34 percent of these triples, the volume won out, with Houston outscoring Golden State by 27 points from beyond the arc in a game they won by four. They believe in these numbers.
And yet, what has really gotten the Rockets back into this series, and perhaps in control of it depending on your perspective, is the one thing you can’t measure: Heart. It sounds romantically cliché, I know. But it’s true. Fact is, if you want to talk numbers, over 93 percent of teams that go down 2-0 in a best-of-seven series end up losing that series. When the Rockets lost the first two games in Oakland, they could’ve easily packed it in. But they didn’t.
Instead, they started defending even harder. Have you noticed how few open shots the Warriors are getting? That’s not an accident. The Rockets did the same thing to them last year when they came within a fingernail of knocking the champs out. It’s nothing fancy. P.J. Tucker and company are just getting into old-school stances and battling their backsides off. They’re switching. Helping down on drives. Scrambling out to shooters. They’ve made multiple efforts in multiple games, and now here they are.
That effort applies to the offensive end, as well. In Games 1 and 2, Harden was settling for step-back threes and begging for calls. When he didn’t get them, he could’ve given up. Instead, he adjusted. In Game 4 he was attacking the rim, and he was making it a point to get all the way there, rather than relying too heavily on the floater with which he’s fallen in love with over the last year. Nothing soft the rest of this series. That’s how Houston has gotten back into it. They’re beating Golden State up. How about 30 offensive boards over the last two games? How about a 21-rebound edge overall in Games 3 and 4?
Again, these are numbers that add up. As do Harden’s threes. There’s a skill in simply being able to get that many shots off, and there’s a relentlessness in continuing to launch them make or miss. The Rockets are steadfast, man. They don’t quit coming. But more than any of the 3-pointers, it was a couple of mid-range jumpers that caught my eye in Game 4.
See, math and data are fine. But that stuff plays out over the long haul. In playoff basketball, one possession here or there decides games. Decides series. Decides championships. Sometimes, you just need a bucket however you can get it. Last year in Game 7, the Rockets were so glued to their principles they missed 27 straight 3-pointers en route to their demise. This year, look at the shot Iman Shumpert hits when the Warriors had cut the lead to four late in the third quarter.
That’s what you call stemming the tide. The Warriors were charging back, and that Shumpert bucket steadied things. Less than a minute later the Rockets had gone from a four-point lead to a nine-point lead heading into the third quarter. That’s a five-point swing in what ended up a four-point game. It started with a mid-range jumper. The very shot the Rockets usually do everything they can to avoid.
Later in the fourth quarter, again with the Warriors charging, Stephen Curry having just hit a 3-pointer to cut the lead to seven, it was Harden again saying screw the math and simply going and getting a mid-range bucket when the Rockets needed one.
That’s still in the paint, but it’s not a shot the Rockets, or specifically Harden, take very often. But he took it there. And he made it. The Rockets are doing what they need to do to win — not abandoning the numbers, but not dying with them either. They’re back in the fight against a team that was on the verge of knocking them out, and that says more about the heart of this team than any data point ever could.
