Things didn’t go too swimmingly for the Houston Rockets in the opening of their Western Conference Finals series against the Golden State Warriors Monday evening.
Way too reliant on James Harden offensively and unable to stop Kevin Durant on the defensive end of the court, Houston fell at home in Game 1 by the score of 119-106. It’s a game that seemingly showed the defending champs to be juggernauts.
A day after the blowout loss, Mr. Harden himself is speaking out. In fact, he’s putting more onus on his teammates following a 41-point performance.
Rockets’ James Harden: “I can’t do it by myself. We need everybody to be at their top play.” pic.twitter.com/fweymSXR1Z
— Ben Golliver (@BenGolliver) May 15, 2018
“I can’t do it by myself. We need everybody to be at their top play,” Harden said.
Harden is absolutely right here. He accounted for 39 percent of Houston’s points and dished out another seven assists. Meanwhile, fellow starters P.J. Tucker and Trevor Ariza combined for nine points on 3-of-11 shooting. Relying so much on Harden against lesser teams is one thing. But he can’t do everything against a squad like Golden State and expect to come out on top.
Following the loss, Rockets head coach Mike D’Antoni noted that the Rockets will not change their offensive game plan heading into Game 2 Wednesday evening. The team relied a whole heck of a lot on iso ball with Harden being defended by Stephen Curry. He did drop 41 points on 24 shots. The efficiency was there. Unfortunately, no one else picked up the slack.
Defensively, Harden was downright disastrous. He allowed Warriors guards to drive past him for easy baskets multiple times. He also left Klay Thompson open on a ton of three-point attempts. So while Harden is right about others having to pick it up offensively, he needs to start doing his part on defense. If not, this will certainly be a short series.