The second round of the Western Conference playoffs could begin as early as Friday, as both the 2-7 and 3-6 matchups in the conference are lopsided, with potential series-deciding Game 5’s on the docket for Wednesday night and Game 6’s scheduled for Friday. The sixth-seeded Minnesota Timberwolves are up 3-1 on the third-seeded Los Angeles Lakers, while the seventh-seeded Golden State Warriors seek to go up 3-1 on the second-seeded Houston Rockets tonight.
The X-factor is the health of Warriors forward Jimmy Butler, who took a hard fall on his back early on in Game 2 and suffered a glute and pelvis bruise that held him out of Game 3. Golden State won that game anyway behind a 36-point, seven-board, nine-assist effort from Stephen Curry.
The Warriors are four-point favorites (-175 Moneyline) at DraftKings Sportsbook to take the 3-1 edge, with the point total set for 202.5. Meanwhile, Houston is +145 on the Moneyline.
Rockets at Warriors Game 4 preview, prediction
This series promised to be a gritty defensive affair — with each team rostering a player who got a first-place Defensive Player of the Year vote in Golden State’s Draymond Green and the Rockets’ Amen Thompson — and so far, it has lived up to the hype. Each team’s offense has scored fewer than than 100 points in the series twice — something that only happened in 324 of the 2,460 team games during the regular season — and twice Houston has shot worse than 40% from the field. The Warriors also rank third among postseason participants so far in steals per game, and the Rockets have dominated both the defensive and offensive glass.
Golden State’s defense allowed it to hold Houston off in Game 3, with Thompson, Alperen Şengün, Jalen Green, Fred VanVleet, and Tari Eason all shooting south of 40% from the field. That allowed it to overcome mediocre performances from Jonathan Kuminga — who earned a spot start in Butler’s absence and finished with just seven points and a team-worst minus-five — Green, and Brandin Podziemski. Despite Green giving up five turnovers for the second straight game, he made up for it with two steals and three blocks, tying Patrick Ewing for the ninth-most five-stock playoff games in NBA history.
Ultimately, the Warriors’ chances of winning tonight depend on whether or not Butler returns. After he joined the team, Golden State outscored opponents by 9.2 points per 100 possessions with him on the floor, a figure 7.2 points per 100 possessions better than with him on the bench, while with Kuminga on the floor, the Warriors were 3.7 points per 100 possessions worse than with him on the bench. In particular, Butler’s presence helped unlock Podziemski — during the regular season, that duo blitzed opponents by 15.8 points per 100 possessions — and its not a coincidence that the southpaw was poor in Games 2 and 3 without him.
Rockets at Warriors pick, best bet
If Butler doesn’t play, the question becomes whether or not Golden State’s Game 3 performance was sustainable. It benefited from 17 points from Buddy Hield, the sixth-most that he’s recorded since the All-Star break, a span in which he’s scored single-digit points 16 times, as well as 16 from Gary Payton II, his third-highest total of the season and his 13th-most efficient shooting performance. Six of Payton’s nine field-goal attempts came with more than four feet of daylight, but he hit five of them after making just 44.5% of such attempts during the regular season. Hield’s outburst is probably more replicable, since it was merely his 22nd-best shooting performance of the season and he missed five of his six wide-open triples.
Defensively, the Warriors also benefited from some shooting luck. Thompson was less efficient than usual based on where the nearest defender was when he shot it; although Golden State did a good job getting a defender within four feet of his shots, it can’t expect him to shoot three-for-10 on contested shots again. Şengün, too, shot three-for-12 on contested shots after making 52.4% of such tries during the regular season. Ditto for VanVleet, who’s been open or wide-open on 78% of his shots this series and is shooting just 26.8% from the field and 20.7% beyond the arc, but to be fair, he’s only shot better than 50% from the field 12 times this season. Of course, by the same token, the Warriors might get better shooting nights from Green and Quinten Post.
Regardless of whether or not Butler plays, Houston should continue rolling out the double-big lineup pairing Şengün and Steven Adams. In 162 regular-season minutes, the jumbo duo recorded 30.9 points and 16.8 rebounds per 100 possessions more than its opponents, and in the playoffs, the two most effective five-man units among Adams’ five most frequent lineups include Şengün. Both double-big lineups have blitzed Golden State in both scoring and rebounding, and the Warriors can only compensate for their lack of size with hustle to a certain extent, especially in the share of Butler’s minutes that go to the six-foot-two Payton. Ime Udoka should also consider taking some minutes away from VanVleet, since he hasn’t exactly been playing elite defense on Curry in addition to his shooting woes.
With Butler in the lineup, Golden State should win, given his defensive versatility and the defensive attention he takes away from Curry. That’s doubly true at the Chase Center, where the Warriors went a solid 9-4 in the regular season after adding Butler to the roster. There’s no guarantee that he’ll be fully healthy, though, and the Rockets are more in need of making adjustments after dropping an eminently winnable game on Saturday. Tonight’s game will be close, so close that I’m going to chicken out and not offer a prediction on who’s going to win.
