To say that the Houston Rockets got off to a terrible start to their season is quite the understatement. Of all the teams to get crushed by, the Nuggets? A couple nights after failing to cover by a whopping 30.5 points, Houston will be back at it against the team which beat them in the Western Conference Finals last year, the Golden State Warriors.
SCHEDULING
The Dubs started off their year with a bang by beating the Pelicans to cover the 10-point spread, but this is their first road trip. They've got to play on consecutive nights against Houston and New Orleans, and clearly, Luke Walton is going to have to do some management here to make sure that he doesn't wear his men out before the trip to the Bayou on Saturday.
INJURIES
Andrew Bogut suffered a concussion in his first game of the year, and that's going to cause the Warriors to go small for a while until he passes through protocol. For the most part, Walton elected to go the small ball route by letting Draymond Green play center.
That might work against a team like New Orleans which is somewhat limited by its size, but against Houston, that could cause some problems. Not only can the Rockets put Dwight Howard on the floor, but they aren't afraid to go big when they have to as well.
KEY MATCHUP
It's all about that Howard/Green matchup from our perspective. D-12 was suspended for the opening game of the season against Denver due to a flagrant foul in the playoffs, but he'll be back out there in this one. He won't likely have Donatas Motiejunas out there with him thanks to his back injury, which is going to force him to play a lot of minutes in all likelihood. Clint Capela just won't cut it as a center against this unit.
Howard wasn't an elite scorer against Golden State in the playoffs, but he did dominate on the glass, averaging 14.4 boards per game in that series. It's not often that Golden State goes cold from the field, but in the event that it does, Howard has no one on the court who can body up with him on the glass.
ANALYSIS AND PREDICTION
We expect to see a heck of a lot better this time around for Houston than we saw against Denver. The Rockets should be a lot more fluid offensively with Ty Lawson running the show at the point guard spot, and James Harden should have more than 22 points as he had against the Rockets as well.
Add in Howard to the mix, and this starting five is about as strong as it gets in the NBA. This game should be a lot more open than any of those playoff games were, and it should feature more possessions than the opening game did against Denver.
Golden State is going to be favored in this game, and the argument could be made that it should be, but we think there's going to be a bit of an overlay here after watching the Rockets play so poorly against Denver in their one offering this year.
Steph Curry will very likely get his as he did in the opener when he scored 24 points in the first quarter and 40 for the game, but in this case, we don't think it'll be quite enough to tame a hungry Houston side.
Houston 112, Golden State 107
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