[Chron] Spurs next test for James Harden, Chris Paul

The loss does not bring the pain it had before, but the scar tissue is there, somewhere beneath the surface where it no longer forces the Rockets to relive that stunning night.

The Rockets could call their first meeting with that team on that same court "just another game," no more than a test that even with the NBA's best record they said they could use. But the Rockets knew, as Western Conference teams long have, that even a December meeting with the Spurs either carries weight other games might not, or perhaps just symbolically offers a chance to leave Game 6 behind by demonstrating how much had changed.

"We will see," Rockets coach Mike D'Antoni said when asked if the Rockets are better-equipped to handle what beat them last spring. "We're a better team than last year. I hope we're better-equipped. It'll be a good test. It'll be fun to see where were are."

December regular-season games don't mean much by a spring post-season series. The Rockets began last December by beating the Warriors to start a 15-2 month. But if there was a lesson to the Rockets' loss to the Spurs last May it was that James Harden could use help with the playmaking and to keep him fresher longer. Seven weeks later, the Rockets added Chris Paul.

The Rockets have not lost a game Paul has played, going 12-0 including the 11-game winning streak they'll bring into Friday's Toyota Center reunion. Whether that and the other changes since are solutions might not be answered a third of the way into the season, but the Spurs return to Houston will at least offer clues.

"I feel like we've gotten better for sure since last year," Rockets forward Trevor Ariza said. "Still way too early to talk about series against anybody right now. We're still trying to figure out some things about ourselves, figure out who we are, how we like to play.

"Their schemes usually work well or frustrated James in the past. But we are a different team this year. We do things a little bit different throughout the game."

It is likely no more than coincidence that the Rockets' response to their most crushing loss was to bring in a star who might have authored his most triumphant moment against the same opponent.

The Rockets would have gleefully dealt for Paul no matter who ended their previous season. But two seasons before the Spurs eliminated the Rockets, Paul limped his way past the Spurs in a Game 7, alternately grabbing at his left hamstring and hitting 3s, until he finally banked in the one-legged, fallaway game-winner with one second left.

The Clippers, eliminated by the Rockets in the next round, have not won a playoff series since, perhaps indicating why Paul wanted to join the Rockets as much as why the Rockets needed Paul.

The way the Spurs swarmed to Harden and wore him out until he hit a Game 5 wall that he never escaped in his Game 6 dud would have seemed to call for a second playmaker, the sort of job description few players could fill better than Paul.

"I don't know if we needed, not needed (Paul); we needed something," D'Antoni said. "Chris has definitely given us … the second playmaker. We're just a better team. We needed more stuff. But then again, I thought we should have won last year. If we had stayed the same would we have beat them this year? I don't know. It's better that we have two or three more weapons."

Paul insisted that when he watched the Rockets' season crash against the Spurs he did not imagine himself on the Toyota Center floor that night, working in the space created by the attention paid to stopping Harden, picturing ways to change the Rockets' direction weeks before he and Harden would engineer his arrival in Houston.

"I wasn't thinking about it that in depth at the time," Paul said. "Any time I'm looking at anything and inserting myself, it's not the same as when I'm out there."

The Spurs, however, were unusually well-suited to defend Harden last season by either switching or forcing him to long and disciplined big men in the paint. They limited the Rockets' open looks at the 3-point line where they averaged three fewer 3-pointers per game against the Spurs than they did overall last season. Paul, however, has lightened Harden's load and triggered offense both around Harden and when he sits.

"Just having Chris brings that extra weapon where you worry about him creating and him scoring as well," Harden said. "We'll be anxious to see how that works out tomorrow."

He would probably feel the same way against any contender. But it might say something about the Spurs and that night last May that the team with the NBA's best record saw a chance to measure progress since they last met.

"It's a good test for us," Harden said. "We're playing extremely well. A team like that, it's a good test. We just have to go out and do what we've been doing."

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