The Western Conference’s second-seeded Houston Rockets will take on the seventh-seeded Golden State Warriors, who advanced out of the play-in tournament, in the first round of the 2025 NBA playoffs. The two franchises last squared off in the postseason in 2019, with the Warriors booting the Rockets out of the second round in six games.
An awful lot can change in six years. One thing that hasn’t, though? The Warriors still have Stephen Curry and Draymond Green (and Kevon Looney).
What we know about the Rockets
They beat the hell out of you, man.
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It took two seasons for Ime Udoka to transform Houston from a flailing, formless also-ran into one of the league’s most clearly defined teams — a tough, physical, very athletic war rig predicated on the application of relentless pressure:
With demons like Amen Thompson, Dillon Brooks and Tari Eason on the perimeter, the Rockets finished the regular season fourth in defensive efficiency, 10th in steals, 11th in deflections and 13th in blocks. They also led the NBA by a mile in offensive rebounding rate — when they played All-Star Alperen Şengün and Steven Adams together, they hauled in more than half of their missed shots! — and second-chance points, while ranking in the top 10 in points in the paint, personal fouls drawn and avoiding turnovers (thanks largely to the eternally steady Fred VanVleet).
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Take the ball away from the other team, get to the line more than you send them there, generate extra shots on the offensive glass; it’s not an easy formula, but it’s brutally effective. No team won the nightly possession battle by as large a margin as these Rockets, which is how a team with one above-average 3-point shooter (Brooks, 39.7%) that ranks in the bottom third of the league at the rim, from midrange and from deep can flirt with a top-10 offensive rating.
An offense like that with a defense this ferocious can put even good opponents through hell. Only Oklahoma City, Cleveland and Boston have fared better against teams with winning records than the Rockets, and Houston is one of just six teams with a positive net rating against teams with top-10 point differentials. Whether it’s enough to get past an opponent with a dramatic advantage in postseason experience, though, remains to be seen.
What we know about the Warriors
The Jimmy Butler trade saved their season, and maybe the twilight of the Steph-Draymond-Steve Kerr era.
The Warriors had the West’s second-best record after the trade deadline, outscoring opponents by 9.5 points per 100 non-garbage-time possessions, the league’s third-best net rating. After Tuesday’s play-in win, they’re now 24-7 with Butler in the lineup — and 23-5 when they’ve had Butler, Curry and Green on the floor. That’s a 67-win pace, which helps explain why a seventh seed enters Round 1 as a favorite.
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Butler’s been transformational. He gave Kerr an offensive change-up, an alternative to the Steph-centric motion offense — a steady dose of high-efficiency isolation play capable of repeatedly generating good looks. He turned the Warriors into a high free-throw, low-turnover, chaos-creating defensive machine and gave real teeth to their small-ball looks, kickstarting a late-season run to the top of the defensive charts. (Since Jimmy’s debut, Golden State has generated 7.3 more possessions per game than its opponents — a number that would dwarf Houston’s league-leading mark.)
Most of all, he unlocked Curry, reducing the weight on his shoulders and reinvigorating him. He’s averaging 27.9 points and 5.7 assists per game on .644 true shooting since the trade — numbers that only a scant few other players have ever put up, production that we really shouldn’t take for granted from a 37-year-old … and the sort of haymaker that can leave an opponent laying on its back, staring at the lights, wondering what happened. Ask Ime. He remembers.
Head-to-head
Golden State won the season series, 3-2. (The fifth game came in the NBA Cup quarterfinals. Houston won.)
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The three 2024 affairs came before Golden State traded for Butler. We shouldn’t totally throw them out, though, if for no other reason than the NBA Cup contest — which saw a controversial foul call grant Houston the game-winning free throws — laid the groundwork for what’s become a spicy vibe:
Since the Butler trade, each team has a win, with Golden State taking one on the eve of the All-Star break behind 27 from Steph, and the Rockets getting their lick back earlier this month, holding the Warriors to their fifth-least-efficient offensive performance of the season and bottling up Curry to the tune of just three points on 1-for-10 shooting with four turnovers.
As the two teams walked off the court for halftime, Curry appeared to register discontent with the officials about how physically Houston was defending him. Udoka made sure to cross Steph’s path, so they could exchange pleasantries:
“When people start complaining about foul calls or crying about physicality, you’ve done your job,” Udoka later told The Athletic. “That’s the first step in winning the battle.”
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The Rockets did win that battle — part of a hellacious closing kick that saw them win 15 of their final 20 games. What comes next, though, should be a war.
Matchup to watch
Small vs. big
Yes, that’s an oversimplification. VanVleet, perhaps Houston’s most important player for his ability to organize the offense and protect the ball, is (listed at) 6-foot even. Kerr has two bigs to deploy off the bench: the stalwart Looney and rookie Quinten Post. (Jonathan Kuminga’s there, too … if Kerr feels like looking for him.)
For the most part, though, that’s the stylistic clash at the heart of this series. Golden State wants to downsize and put skill on the floor, spreading you out and slicing you up with ball and body movement. Houston loves nothing more than smothering you with size, giving you nowhere to run to, baby, nowhere to hide.
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When that works, it looks like Houston’s April win, with Thompson getting credit for the clamp-down. As coaches so often say, though, addressing a threat like Steph demands a total team effort.
Brooks, VanVleet, Green and Eason took turns pressing up on Curry, selling out to stonewall him or steer him into waiting help. When he gained separation from one of them, another invariably sprinted over with a hair-on-fire closeout. Şengün and Adams both played up high, putting two on the ball in screening actions to force him to make a play in a phone booth.
Every defensive possession laid bare Udoka’s mandate to keep Curry from seeing clean looks or establishing rhythm:
For good reason. As well as the Warriors have done in non-Curry minutes since Butler’s arrival, that’s been based on excellent defense; those lineups still struggle offensively without Steph to warp coverages. The hard part is holding the Warriors down when Curry’s on the court, but the Rockets have done just that: Golden State scored at a sub-Wizards clip against Houston with Curry on the court during the regular season and the NBA Cup; if you can win wrestling matches when Steph plays and rockfights when he sits, you’re in good shape.
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How Kerr and Co. game-plan for a one-off matchup differs vastly from how they’ll gear up for a series, though. The Warriors have to take advantage of the all-hands-on-deck approach on Curry, exploiting every 4-on-3 opportunity they get in hopes of eventually forcing Houston to dial back the pressure and buying Steph some breathing room. They’ll have to play fast enough, and score enough, to make it untenable for Houston to play double-big. (The shot-making and offensive-glass activity of Moses Moody and Gary Payton II could be swing factors.)
Green must keep Şengün off the offensive glass — and stay out of foul trouble — and the wings have to gang-rebound to finish possessions. Whatever Kerr’s misgivings about his feel, this does seem like a matchup where the athleticism of the 6-foot-8 Kuminga — who had the best net rating of any rotation Warrior against Houston this season — might really help.
This isn’t the first time the Warriors have faced a bigger, more athletic postseason opponent; they’ve done all of this before. To keep their second-half surge going, though, they’ll have to do it again.
Crunch-time lineups
Houston Rockets
While the five-man unit of VanVleet, Şengün, Brooks, Jalen Green and Jabari Smith Jr. was the NBA’s fifth-most-frequently used lineup this season, a variant with Thompson stepping in for Smith got the most fourth-quarter minutes in Houston — and one with Thompson’s fellow “Terror Twin” ball-hawk Eason slotting in for FVV was its most successful, outscoring opponents by 17 points in an admittedly tiny 28 minutes.
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You might see Adams for rebounding here or Aaron Holiday for full-court pressure there, but chances are Udoka will mostly stick with those seven. Which five, however, is anybody’s guess and will depend on what Houston needs most at that specific moment. Green is the Rockets’ leading scorer, but Udoka has shown no compunction about putting him on the pine to tighten the defensive screws; Şengün is the team’s lone All-Star, but he’ll sit down if Udoka thinks switching everything is the move.
Sometimes those choices can come back to bite a Rockets team that ranked 22nd in half-court scoring efficiency and 18th in clutch offensive rating. In crunch-time, though, expect Udoka to lean defense-first, liking his team’s chances if the game’s decided in the mud.
Golden State Warriors
You can write Curry, Green and Butler in Sharpie. Moody and Brandin Podziemski — the other two players in what’s been one of the NBA’s best starting lineups lately — round out Golden State’s top five in clutch minutes per game since Jimmy’s debut.
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Kerr also trusts Looney, Payton and glue-guy wing Gui Santos in big moments. He clearly doesn’t feel as comfortable with Kuminga; it’ll be fascinating to see if Houston’s physicality forces him outside his comfort zone to fight fire with fire.
Prediction: Warriors in six
Past performance doesn’t guarantee future results. But I’ve yet to see this Rockets core win a seven-game series, and I’ve seen Steph and Draymond get a game on the road and eventually break a more athletic team, I’ve seen Jimmy tilt matchups against favorites, and I’ve seen both of those things a lot. Houston suffers the same fate as countless postseason debutantes across NBA history, and Golden State keeps rolling.
Series betting odds
(via BetMGM)
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Houston Rockets (+160)
Golden State Warriors (-190)
Series schedule (all times Eastern)
Game 1: Sunday @ Houston (9:30 p.m., TNT)
Game 2: Wed., April 23 @ Houston (9:30 p.m., TNT)
Game 3: Sat., April 26 @ Golden State (8:30 p.m., ABC)
Game 4: Mon., April 28 @ Golden State (10 p.m., TNT)
*Game 5: Wed., April 30 @ Houston (TBD)
*Game 6: Fri., May 2 @ Golden State (TBD)
*Game 7: Sun., May 4 @ Houston (TBD)
*if necessary
More series previews
East: Magic-Celtics • Pistons-Knicks • Bucks-Pacers
West: Warriors-Rockets • Wolves-Lakers • Clippers-Nuggets
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