Looking ahead to Houston and Los Angeles’ crucial Game 7
The Los Angeles Clippers and Houston Rockets will meet on Sunday to give us the only Game 7 of the NBA’s 2015 Conference semifinals, which seems rather bonkers when you think about it.
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Chicago and Cleveland appeared well on their way toward matching each other fit for fit until LeBron James hit a Game 4 game-winner and Chicago fell apart over the next two games. The Grizzlies and Warriors, the two best teams in the Western Conference for most of the season by record, petered out in Memphis during Game 6. Washington was quite literally a fingernail edge away from sending its series against Atlanta into a Game 6 overtime period that would have been played with all the momentum while on its home court.
Instead, only the Rockets and Clippers series has yet to be decided. It’s the least-likely result from two squads that seemed the most dissimilar after the first four games of the series.
The teams’ architects follow a similar pattern. Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey didn’t have some grand vision of fielding a team with James Harden, Dwight Howard and Josh Smith when Yao Ming went down with his final foot injury in 2009 or when Tracy McGrady was dealt away for assets in 2010, but he has done well to think on his feet while turning that paperclip into a snowglobe into what he hopes will become a champion.
Doc Rivers inherited his four best players, and spent the bulk of 2014-15 being rightfully criticized for a series of shortsighted moves that cost both the Clippers depth and seemingly a chance at letting Chris Paul lead a winner to a championship in his prime. Rivers is a brilliant basketball mind and a fine coach, and it wasn’t as if he took over a team rife with assets to toss around in 2013 (save for his top, untouchable, players), but his rare hits in a series of minor moves has caught up to Los Angeles at times.
Let’s catch up with this series.
How We Got Here
Houston and Los Angeles finished with the same record in the regular season, with both winning 56 games, but because Houston won its division the Rockets earned (?) the chance to run with home court advantage on Sunday. Kevin McHale’s crew did well to salvage some sort of dignity by taking Game 2 at home by a six-point advantage, but the Clippers dominated in Game 1 prior to that and ended up winning both that contest along with Game 3 and Game 4 by a combination of 77 points.
It seemed that the rout was on, but Houston rallied to win Game 5 at home as expected – it’s hard to take down even a disappointing squad like the Rockets in five games. What nobody expected was what took place in Game 6 in Los Angeles: Houston rallied from 19 points down with just 15 minutes left in the contest to pull out a shocking Game 6 victory.
Even more odd was the team’s stylistic approach – James Harden sat down the stretch of what appeared to be a blowout, before Corey Brewer and Josh Smith (who were even terrible to start that actual game, much less the entire series) pell-melled their way toward loping finishes and three-point daggers in the return.
In a span of just four days the Clippers seemed to go from the easy favorites to finish off a lacking Rockets team to one forced into working on the road in order to move onto a Conference final turn that most just assumed was an inevitability. It’s hard to fathom just what could be more destructive to the team’s psyche – the four days that turned its season on its ear, or the 45 real time minutes it took Houston’s reserves to put Los Angeles’ season on the brink.
How the Clipper can win
When you play six games of mostly one-sided basketball, with only that ridiculous fourth quarter in Game 6 acting anything acting as a semblance of late-game import, it’s hard to get a peg on things. Most of these games were won in second quarters, but some trends for Los Angeles have to emerge.
Guard J.J. Redick has been a no-show even in victory, and he’s going to have to play the antihero road role he’s long relished. Fellow shooter Jamal Crawford looked as if he’d started to turn things around late in Los Angeles’ first round win over the San Antonio Spurs, but this series (and postseason, mostly) has been one long struggle for him.
Paul and forward Blake Griffin will be fine, but it’s the team’s other star that is the concern. Much of the game coverage will focus on whether or not Rox coach Kevin McHale will have the temerity to resort to the much-loathed Hack-a-Jordan strategy on a national television stage in Game 7, and that’s just fine. What Jordan truly needs to worry about more his is ability to stay on the court while avoiding fouls.
It’s very much possible that the stats are skewed because of Houston’s clunky and rhythm-less offense following even Jordan’s intentional free throw misses, but the Clippers have been a downright horrific defensive outfit with Jordan off the floor in this series. He has to stay off the bench in what could be his final game as a Clipper.
Intangibles, lucky for us sportswriters, will matter here.
The Clippers are smart cookies who know exactly what they’ve done over the last few days, and they could either let them eat away at their confidence as another 24-footer rolls out midway through the first quarter, or they could hype themselves into oblivion (Doc Rivers will once again beg for desperation) and be mentally exhausted by the second quarter. Or, they could revel in the visiting role, pretending to play pressure-less ball even if all the pressure should be on the team that downed the defending champions in seven games prior to dominating the first four games of the Conference semis.
How Houston can win
Corey Brewer and Josh Smith, they of the endless missed three-pointers (three of 25 entering Game 6) will not be starting despite their late-game success in Game 6. The NBA will not allow the Rockets to start the game with a 19-point disadvantage, and they’re not going to be allowed to call this “a must-win Game 5.” Houston, working at home and with the better seed, will have to play from ahead, and they haven’t been great at this thus far.
James Harden has been slowly working his free throw numbers back up to the level that we saw in the regular season, and while a 45-point afternoon from the MVP candidate could put Houston over the top, it isn’t necessary for a win. The same goes for Dwight Howard, he won’t have to come through with the sort of game that redeems four years of you not thinking all that highly of him in order for Houston to win.
No, the helpers beyond the two stars need to help again. They need to improve the defense, even in the face of two consecutive wins, as the Clippers have picked up far too many open looks even in defeat. Los Angeles just isn’t hitting shots, and while Houston is to be commended for taking advantage, three games in a row is a hell of a long trend to bank on in the NBA.
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Kelly Dwyer is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @KDonhoops
