
HOUSTON – The Warriors had chances to get a victory they didn’t earn Thursday night. Because they couldn’t figure out how, we have at least a semblance of a series.
For at least the next two days, that is.
Their 97-96 loss to the Rockets in Game 3 of their first-round series was a study in poor judgment and reckless play and, at times, an overt departure from the quality team basketball that so often defined them during a historically great regular season.
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[POOLE: Draymond: 'I was awful' in Game 3 loss to Rockets]
These Warriors were, for most of the night, unrecognizable, and not just because Stephen Curry was out for the second consecutive game.
“We had too many mistakes throughout the course of the game at both ends, really,” coach Steve Kerr said.
The Warriors committed 14 turnovers, leading to 20 Houston points. They were outrebounded 52-43. Klay Thompson was bad, Draymond Green worse. They trailed by as much as 17 points, deserving every bit of that deficit.
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And, still, with the help of the profoundly defective Rockets, the Warriors fought back to take a pair of late leads before losing when James Harden nailed a step-back jumper with 2.7 seconds to play.
“To come back in a game were everything went wrong . . . I don’t know how we were still in the game,” Draymond Green said.
“But that’s because guys really competed. I’m definitely proud of the guys. We don’t do moral victories, nothing like that. Just to continue to fight like that says a lot about this group. But I cost us the game.”
Green’s miscues – he had seven turnovers were merely one component of the many that went awry. Thompson took seven 3-point shots and missed them all, including one he rushed up with 26.9 seconds to play.
“It hurts to go 0-fors on 3s,” Thompson said. “I’ll watch the tape on my shots and see what I can do better, especially the last two that I had. The last one felt good and the other shot was wide open. That’s basketball and there’s no time to sulk.
“It obviously hurts real bad. It’s not really a quick turn around, but I have a chance to redeem myself on Sunday. It’s not the end of the world.”
[RATTO: Warriors loss means nothing, and Rockets bench knows it]
No, it’s merely the end of the opportunities to sweep the Rockets, who were not – Harden aside – exactly fabulous. They shot 39.1 percent, but offset that with a rebounding advantage that afforded them a 16-5 margin in second-chance points and 13 more total attempts than the Warriors.
That the Warriors came so close to winning this game is directly attributable to the performances of Marreese Speights (22 points, on 7-of-11 shooting in 18 minutes), Shaun Livingston (16 points, five rebounds, three assists and three steals) and Ian Clark (11 points and five assists in 21 minutes off the bench).
Though that trio delivered the most encouraging performances, the Warriors clearly missed Curry, who is expected to return for Game 4 on Sunday.
“I’m not really encouraged; this is how we were supposed to play,” Kerr said of the comeback. “We should have actually played better; we made too many mistakes. We had a lot of good individual performances, but we’ve got to play better as a team.
“Whether Steph is here or not, we should perform at a high level, which we did for much of the game. But we’ve got to eliminate some of those mistakes that we made.”
That the Warriors have a 2-1 series lead with Curry returning is the sunlight peeking through a night of thick clouds and, to be sure, a level of basketball well beneath them.
They’re not in bad shape, they know they could’ve been in better shape and they absolutely expect to regain form in Game 4.
“The MVP is out, and 30 points a game, we’re going to miss that,” Livingston said of Curry’s absence. “That means there is smaller margin for error. We don’t have a lot of wiggle room to play with, so we have to pay attention to detail. We have to do all of the little things. The little things are more important than ever when a guy like that is out.
“We can’t beat ourselves, and I think we did that tonight as a team.”
The Warriors did indeed sabotage themselves. They almost got away with it. Almost.