The Houston Rockets can take a big step toward clinching the No. 2 seed in the Western Conference but will have to deal with a longtime nemesis, when they visit the Golden State Warriors in San Francisco on Sunday night.
A 52nd win by the Rockets (51-27) would assure them at least a tie for second place with the Los Angeles Lakers (47-30), who visit Oklahoma City in an afternoon affair Sunday. The Rockets and Lakers are 1-1 in their season series — a potential seeding tiebreaker — with one final regular-season meeting Friday in Los Angeles.
The Warriors (46-31) will also have their eye on the Lakers-Thunder matchup as a Los Angeles defeat would drop it into a tie with Golden State in the loss column, pending the evening result in San Francisco. A Warriors win also could allow them to pass Denver (47-31), which hosts Indiana on Sunday, for the fourth spot with one week to play.
History says Golden State is a team the Rockets would love to avoid in the playoffs. The Warriors have won three of four in this season’s series after having entered the year on a 13-game winning streak in head-to-head matchups.
The Warriors haven’t lost to the Rockets in San Francisco since Feb. 20, 2020, which was so long ago, James Harden and Russell Westbrook combined for 50 points for the winners, while Damion Lee started in place of his brother-in-law, Stephen Curry, for Golden State. Curry was out with a broken left hand.
The teams will be meeting for the second time since Jimmy Butler III joined the Warriors in early February. Curry had 27 points and Butler 19 in a 105-98 Golden State road win in the team’s fourth game after the trade with Miami.
Golden State has gone 21-5 since the blockbuster, but equally important, have gone 7-2 since Brandin Podziemski joined Curry and Butler in the starting lineup after missing five games with a back injury. The Warriors are 14-0 this season when Draymond Green and Moses Moody have joined that trio in the starting lineup.
While Curry and Butler have attracted most of the attention, Podziemski has been a major contributor in three of the victories in Golden State’s current five-game winning streak, scoring 26+ points in three of those games. During the stretch, he has sunk 20 out of 38 3-point attempts.
Podziemski believes his current hot streak has actually benefitted Curry, who has averaged 41.7 points in his last three games.
“I look at me, Moses, JK (Jonathan Kuminga), Quinten (Post) all helping Jimmy and Steph,” he insisted. “By us being a threat, us scoring … Peyton Watson was on me (Friday night), and usually they put (Michael) Porter Jr. on me. So them having to take another quality defender off of Steph just helps our team.”
The Rockets have won five of six, including a 125-111 message-deliverer at home over the Thunder on Friday. That began a closing stretch in which the Rockets, after dealing with the Warriors, will head to Southern California to take on both LA teams, then home to duel the Nuggets in the regular-season finale.
Houston beat Oklahoma City without Dillon Brooks, who missed the game on a one-game suspension for technical foul accumulation. He is expected back to face the Warriors.
The Rockets, who hadn’t made the postseason since 2020, hope to follow the lead of Alperen Sengun, who was in playoff mode against the Thunder.
“I was just locked in. I wanted to dominate the game,” h said. “I was making myself mad before the game … that was my mentality.”
–Field Level Media
