Golden State has now won 16 of its past 18 games against Houston, including an 8-2 mark in the past two postseasons.
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Afterward, Curry’s teammates said they encouraged him to stay out and get better.
Despite being in street clothes, Stephen Curry enjoyed the Warriors’ series clinching win Wednesday night. And the raucous Oracle environment was game for a party. The team shot 42% from the field and 27.8% from beyond the arc, far lower than the 50%+ shooting they had in those two games.
The Warriors will face either the Portland Trail Blazers or Los Angeles Clippers in the next round beginning next week with the confidence of having overwhelmed the Rockets in the first round while missing Curry for three of the five games.
Dressed in street clothes and shoes, Curry walked out of the locker room and toward chapel with Warriors and Rockets players in an adjacent room.
More than anything, Game 5 was a reminder of how good Thompson can be when he’s on his game. For every other player, it’s 3-pointers or dunks, and that makes a defensive gameplan really easy to install.
Yes, the Warriors have two guys who can light up the scoreboard like few others. “So the mood’s good”, Green said.
Curry, in a brown sport coat on the bench while nursing his sprained right knee, emphatically bobbed his head, clapped and bowed to Thompson during starter introductions. He fell on his knee while guarding Houston’s Trevor Ariza at the buzzer of the first half.
That air of finality stemmed from an equally definitive period from the Rockets, one in which James Harden made six of eight shots with four turnovers, and the rest of the team missed all 15 of their takes. Eventually Thompson (with the help of the Warriors’ bench) figured out how to get cleaner looks.
“That was an electric kind of moment”. Harden has the ball in his hands virtually all the time, and every possession seems to wind up with one of three scenarios happening: Harden taking a jumper; Harden driving and attempting to draw a foul; or Harden – eventually – kicking the ball out to a three-point shooter on the perimeter. He made 11 3s. Lillard’s back-court mate and the league’s Most Improved Player C.J.McCollum scored a game-high 27 points on 50% shooting. “You could just see it. That’s not conditioning, that was emotion”. “But when we play like this I think it’s hard to beat us”.
Golden State Warriors’ Klay Thompson, center, celebrates with fans after the team’s 114-81 win over the Houston Rockets in Game 5 of a first-round NBA basketball playoff series Wednesday, April 27, 2016, in Oakland, Calif. The Woods-less final round of the Texas Open on NBC posted a 1.6 overnight rating on Sunday, down a tenth from past year and 20 percent from 2014 (2.0). Wednesday’s Game 5 took place exactly 11 months after the Warriors eliminated the Rockets in Game 5 of the Western Conference finals last season…. Their offense was urgent in its pace and movement, but patient in its trust that the Rockets’ defense would eventually buckle on each possession. “So we’ve got to make sure we’re more solid, which we have been”. He absolutely loves when his teammates have success, with and without him, because that means he’s winning too.
His problem is consistency, of course.
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On this night, in this series clincher, Green was the one who lit the fuse, stoked the flames, and roared while the Warriors’ bonfire burned.
