Well, I also predicted that both teams would be hard pressed to get to 100 points and that I wasn't sure who would win in the end, so I wasn't far off there.
If you had told me that Buddy Hield would score 33 points and would make 9 of 11 three-pointers, then I would have said the Warriors would win in a blowout. Not much you can do when players not named Curry or Butler put up those kinds of numbers.
You have to give the Rockets coaching staff credit for adjusting their defense to a 3-2 zone with the middle perimeter defender cheating on Curry in game 5. GS couldn’t shake Curry free and ended up having to hurry late into the shot clock with subsequent poor looks. With the one day turnaround, it looked to me like Kerr decided not to change much off the basic motion staggered screen offense they usually run in game 6, and again they could not get much going. Last night, they adjusted in the first half, sped up their possessions and looked to swing the ball quickly. They changed their spacing, and consistently picked off the weak side defender, opening Heald for excellent looks or getting the ball to Green for intermediate openings. Heald is a step slow to get open against a balanced defense, but when he gets open, as Houston gave him the space last night, he is pretty deadly. Houston shifted back to a more standard defense in the second half, and Curry was able to light them up again. Overall, it was a balanced and interesting series, but GS has just a little more depth and experience than Houston at this point.
