Led by the resurrected Fred Vanvleet and Steven Adams, the Houston Rockets won this Friday 115-107 on the Golden State Warriors court of Stephen Curry and forced a seventh and definitive match of this NBA first round series.
The same tie of the West Conference, tied 3-3 in the global, will be resolved in the final duel of Sunday at the Toyota Center in Houston.
The young Rockets, who compete in their first playoffs since 2020, now have Warriors against the wall who have let an advantage of 3-1 escape.
In case of Victoria on Sunday, Houston will become hardly the fourteenth team in history that goes back a 3-1 against, a deed that does not occur since 2020.
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The Warriors returned to pay their excess dependence on Curry and Jimmy Butler, who ended with 29 and 27 points, while no other headline reached the dozen.
An elimination of this nature would be a hard closure for the mediocre Golden State season, which classified the postseason in the repechage.
Given the visible abatement of his players, coach Steve Kerr tried to insufflate confidence appealing to the successes of Stephen Curry, in which Golden State conquered four rings.
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“The frustration was seen in our body language and we cannot have that in the seventh game,” Kerr asked. “I have confidence, I know what this team can do. We have been there many times and have been successful.”
The coach acknowledged that his adjustments after the beating received on Wednesday were not effective to stop Vanvleet’s great moment, which shone with 29 points, 8 rebounds and 8 assists.
In turn, Steven Adams, a pivot that seemed in unstoppable decline for the lesions, continued to resurface under the guidance of Ime Umoka and was again a wall for the Warriors with 17 points (4-4 in field shots) and 3 caps.
Vanvleet, winner of the ring in 2019 with the Raptors, and Adams are veterans of a squad integrated mostly by debutants in the playoffs.
“We knew what they were capable of, so we wanted to put everything difficult, dispute everything,” Vanvleet said about his team’s mentality. “I think our youth and our athleticism can wear out throughout a party, and we have recently demonstrated it.”
In addition to the extreme equality, this tie has been one of the hottest of the first round and the sparks soon jumping on Friday at the San Francisco Chase Center.
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Draymond Green and Jalen Green, who had already had several physical and verbal encounters, collided again during a Warriors attack.
Green ended up grabbing Green with both hands and was punished with a flagrant foul.
Kerr introduced Gary Payton II in the initial quintet to stop Vanvleet, who has three games in a row with at least 25 points, but the marking did not work and the Warriors facilitated the early domain of Houston.
At the beginning of the second partial, Curry already added four ball losses, for only five points, but before the break he starred in one of its fierce awakenings.
In a frantic and a half minute, the base chained 11 points with which Golden State reached Houston on the scoreboard.
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On the back of the costumes, only Curry and Butler kept some Warriors suffocated by the defense commanded by Adams.
Vanvleet, with his sixth triple, gave the stretch that the rockets needed to avoid Curry’s threat in the tight finals.
The winner of Sunday will play the semifinals of the West in front of the Minnesota Timberwolves, executioners of Los Angeles Lakers of LeBron James and Luka Doncic for a global 4-1.
