At the time that I am writing this, it is Saturday night and the Warriors-Rockets 2018 Western Conference Finals series is ties at 1 a piece. As an avid Rockets fan, and someone who likes to share their opinion, I am going to go through what I see are the keys to the Rockets handling the Warriors and moving on to the NBA Finals.

1. Keep Curry out of the series.
The Warriors famously have 4 All-Stars, those being Kevin Durant, Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, and Draymond Green. This is one of the reasons that the Warriors are so hard to beat. But there is something most people overlook. In Kevin Durant’s top 7 scoring games of the season, the Warriors are 1-6. That one win was game 1 of this series. One of those losses is game 2. Kevin Durant is no question the best player on the team, but Steph Curry is their leader. This goes back even to the 2017 Finals. The one game that the Cavs one was a game that Kevin Durant went off, but Steph went quiet. No one on the Rockets can guard Kevin Durant effectively. In fact, there are very few players on that list in general, 10 at most. But one person can’t win a basketball game, not at this stage in the playoffs. In game 2, Kevin Durant scored a game high 38, but Curry was kept at 16. When Curry has a bad game, the team is out of sink and end up losing almost, if not all the time. This also goes for Klay Thompson a little, although not as much, and Klay is easier to guard.

   
2. Bench Depth is Key.
As previously stated, one man can’t win a game at this stage of the playoffs. This is why it is vitally important for the Rockets supporting cast to, well, support James Harden and Chris Paul for the rest of this series. People like Eric Gordon, Trevor Ariza, Clint Capela, P.J. Tucker, Luc Mbah a Moute, Gerald Green, and Ryan Anderson. That’s a lot of names, and that should lead to a lot of production. In game 1, Harden took more 1 more dribble than Curry, Durant, and Thompson combined. That’s too much iso ball. The Rockets immense depth, one of their big advantages, couldn’t effect the game, and they lost. In game 2, Harden had 27, Gordon had 27, Tucker had 22, Ariza had 19, and Chris Paul had 16. Thats 5 people that scored as much or more than Curry (16), who was the Warriors second leading scorer. If that happens again, where 5 Rockets score as many if not more points than the Warriors second leading scorer, they will lose 99% of the time. They need production from their role players if they want to knock off the Dubs.

3. Get in their heads.
At the end of game 2, I noticed something. The Warriors were committing frustration fouls. Things like Durant pushing Harden out of bounds or Draymond shoving Ariza. If you can frustrate the Warriors players enough, you can get them out of their rhythm, or get them to commit Technical or Flagrant fouls. This is something you could see Utah using to their advantage against the Thunder in the First Round. Every once in a while, you could find Joe Ingles taunting Paul George. This made George frustrated, and he didn’t play too well after game 1. If the Rockets can implement this tactic against the defending champs, it’ll mess them up on a psychological level. Especially Draymond, who is known for losing his temper sometimes and racking up technical fouls. He did this in the 2016 Finals, got suspended for a game, and because of that, the Cavs came back from down 3-1 and beat them. And any advantage that the Rockets can find, any crack in the armour, they need to expose and use.

    So those are 3 of the keys for the Rockets to take down the Warriors in the Playoffs this year. I have the Rockets winning in 7, and if they can implement these keys to their playstyle, they can achieve their goal.