I know it's a series most of us would like to forget, but the way the first two games went sounds eerily familiar. Game 1: Playing on the road, the Rockets beat the holy snot out of the Spurs in an embarrassing fashion to grab the home court advantage and look like they could win the whole thing in 4 or 5 games. Game 2: The home-team Spurs roared back to thoroughly drub the Rockets in a beatdown. Despite no longer having home court advantage, the Spurs took 3 of the next 4 to close it out. Hmm... If we can win one in Oakland, this becomes a 3-game series with us having home court advantage again. At that point, I like our odds.
I didn't like how the board kneejerked its way into thinking we had that series by game 3. This team has convinced me in the regular season that they know they have to close out before celebrating.
I didn't, Harden went mental and had 13 or 10 turnovers in back to back elimination games. He went mental in the last game and began to jack up shots like a glory w**** in the 4th quarter. I'm glad we won, but when he does stuff like this, I become skeptical of if he really wants to play team ball. You diehard Harden fans will probably roast me because of this but they will have to play damn near perfect to win at Oracle. It's difficult to see CP3 freeze him out a couple of plays and yell at him to watch Klay open on a back cut. Hardens a great player but ball stopper and has a 'me first' mentality. Paul has made some strides to guide him with his decision making but will it be enough. I guarantee you that if he continues to make quick decisions like last game and allow CP3 to intermittently bring the ball up, we will beat them. Let's see what happens...
Forget the split. We have to play with urgency every game. It may be impractical to some, but if we can take the first, the second becomes a winnable game here. If PJ keeps winning the matchup of him v. Draymond the way he has, we have a real shot - thankfully it is not a one game thing now, and PJ has been playing excellent across the playoffs with big games vs the Jazz and Timberwolves.
