Warriors stun Rockets in Game 3 without Butler as Curry erupts for 36 in Chase Center

Win of the YEAR!

The Warriors pulled off the win of the year in Game 3 against the Rockets, somehow managing to overcome Jimmy Butler's absence and their own regular season demons in a gritty 104-93 victory that showed exactly why championship DNA matters in the playoffs.

For much of the game, it looked like Houston had figured this version of the Warriors out. We saw that same listless team that drifted through the regular season - Steph Curry being hounded, punched, kicked, and scratched, barely finding daylight as the Rockets trapped him 40 feet from the basket. When he swung the ball, chaos ensued: teammates tentatively dribbling into nowhere, creating no momentum, feeble forays to the rim getting no whistles, and horribly jacked threes that only seemed to bolster Houston's confidence.

But as the game progressed, it brought to mind that perfect ocean metaphor - everybody can start swimming great against the Warriors, but after a while, those waves keep coming. The water gets heavier and heavier until that blast pulls you down to a watery grave. That's exactly what Golden State did. Curry finished with 36 points, 7 rebounds, 9 assists, and only 2 turnovers while knocking down 12-of-23 shots from the field. Hehehehahahaha.

From hate to love

There was a point in last night’s game when I started hate watching. You know what hate watching is? Normally when I watch a basketball game, every decision or mistake is weighed on a sliding scale that’s generally very forgiving. Steph Curry with a ridiculous turnover? “Well, hey nobody’s perfect. Get ‘em next time champ”. Draymond Green bodyslams somebody through the announce table? “Hey, let Dray be Dray!”.

But then there’s games that we’ve had to endure throughout this season, where the team was a discombobulated mess that alternates between begging for Steph to save them with no autonomy of their own, or completely forgetting Steph is on the floor and calling their own number to disturbing results.

And then in the non-Steph minutes, watching the team disintegrate like wet tissue paper until Coach Steve Kerr mercifully calls timeout has been probably the main reason this team traded for Jimmy Butler. Another offensively minded floor general who can carve up a defense and take pressure off his teammates.

And for the last 2 months with Jimmy here, I had kinda forgot about the Clueless Dubs who had stumbled around for the majority of this season. We morphed into title contenders over night, and we believed, nay, EXPECTED to win against any given team on a nightly basis.

When Jimmy got hurt in Game 2 against the Rockets after we whupped Houston on the road in Game 1, that loss was something I could swallow. It woulda been tough to take two from the #2 seed on their home court anyway, and if there was one game Jimmy could not be a factor in, that was the one. But Game 3 at home? That’s a must win in order to start putting a strangehold on the series. Without Jimmy, it would be on the role players around Steph Curry to siphon the powerful mystical energy of Dub Nation and have themselves a night. We all know role players traditionally play better at home anyway.

Which takes me back to the hate watching I felt brimming up in my soul. The Rockets slowly began stretching a lead out over the Dubs in the first half with a maddening combo of desperate effort, Golden State’s awkward roster in a post-Jimmy world, and shenanigans.

Desperate Effort

Let’s be very clear about how Houston’s defensive strategy is built:

• Trap the f*ck outta Steph as far away from the basket as possible, preferably close to the half court or out of bounds boundaries.

• Swarm the 6’3 guard until he can’t see where his teammates are, and if he can there’ll be too much length around him to get a quality pass off.

• Jump the passing lanes for any lazy passes, or let the roll man get a catch 20 feet away from the basket. Dare the roll man to hit a mid-range jumper, or get to the rim around Houston’s length.

• If he’s not offensively minded, he’ll either try to wait for Steph to flash back open again, or he’ll take two or three tenative dribbles into the paint before attempting a pass to a teammate that the Rockets are actively anticipating because they didn’t really believe the ballhandler was looking to score anyway. Now there’s steals, or deflections, or confusion.

• If the player on the wing catches the ball as the Rockets’ defense is rotating over to put out the fire, they had .3 seconds to decide whether to shoot, drive, or swing the ball. If the player doesn’t make the right decision quickly, the offense stagnates, the shot clock runs down, and now the Dubs are in hell trying to make something out of nothing.

Cute.

Golden State’s awkward roster

Theoretically this strategy:

1. Takes Steph out of his pick-and-roll or isolation packages where he can pick on a defender one-on-one and bend the entire floor to his will.

2. Forces the rest of GSW’s roster to be tested in terms of shot creation from arc/midrange/paint, their playmaking IQ, and patience.

3. Potentially creates frustration for Steph as he is effectively being taken out of the game by brute force, watching his teammates throw up trash shot attempts or dumb turnovers.

4. Makes Daniel Hardee start hate watching.

Everytime the ball would swing to Buddy Hield with a defender closing in, and he would jack up a shot that would bounce off the rim? Anger. Everytime Jonathan Kuminga would pound the air out of the ball, go nowhere, and miss multiple open teammates? Rage. Everytime Steph would fling a pass out of mean trap to the rookie Quinten Post, and he would throw up an ugly floater or hookshot from midrange? Sickening frustration.

During that first half I genuinely wondered if there was anyone on the team who could be a pressure valve for Steph, anyone who could unlock the Houston’s defensive Rubix cube, and make them bloody pay for their audacious and obvious strategy. Then I remembered that before Jimmy came, that answer was consistently “No”.

When the offense is stuck, Moses Moody oftentimes will pump fake a three, dribble into the paint, and kick it out. Brandin Podziemski will try to slither through the defense looking for a shot, sometimes being stuck with throwing up something just to beat the shot clock.Then it gets down to Draymond Green trying to make something out of nothing, screaming as he throws his body into defenders as the ball slams off the underside of the rim, berating the refs for a non-call as the Rockets fly back the other way.

Then Fred Van Vleet would come down the opposite way, throw a shoulder into somebody’s chest and throw up some garbage that magically went in, and the Rockets bench would go crazy. Or Dillon Brooks would slither into a three-point shot and turn to the Warriors bench like had just kidnapped their wives and children and tied them to the Empire State building. Or Alperen Sengun/Steven Adams just towering over the smaller, less physical Dubs and just ripping an offensive rebound over the heads like giants.

Cue camera pan to Houston Rockets’ head coach Ime Udoka with his head bent forward and his brow fiendishly furrowed like a crime boss watching his team planting a bomb at the nuclear waste factory without a hitch as Batman is forced to fistfight multiple goons outside and and time is running out.

Curry needed his Robin. And then the camera would pan to the bench, where “Robin” was a stonefaced Jimmy watching in what had to be a $20k coat, his glutes bruised from nefarious Rockets play. I hated everything I was seeing, Houston had the Warriors and Dub Nation trapped in a dungeon.

Steph Curry started to hit some shots, the energy started to shift, and when the halftime buzzer sounded I disgruntledly wiped the sweat from my greasy brow and reached my hand back in the bag for my fries. I looked at the score: Rockets 49-Warriors 46? Wait a minute, for as bad as the shorthanded Warriors were playing, Houston was only up three? Stay with me now…what if…these #2 seeded Rockets were, much like the Hardenian era that preceded them, fraudulent?!

I had spent so much time shaking my head at the TV for the Warriors not playing at optimum level, I had taken for granted that the Rockets couldn’t figure anything out offensively either. What the Dubs were missing in offensive rhythm, they were activating defensively, strangling the Rockets and wearing them out. Additionally, do you know how exhausting it must be for Houston to run that “DOUBLE TEAM STEPH CURRY ALL THE TIME AND THEN SCRAMBLE LIKE HELL TO KEEP HIS TEAMMATES FROM GETTING OPEN LOOKS” defense?

Steph isn’t getting weary, in fact, he’s getting energized from the challenge. Everytime he sneaks a pass to an open teammate that ends in a score? Energy. Everytime he beats the trap himself and flies in for a contested layup? ENERGY. Everytime he pump fakes an over eager defender into irrelevance and gets a half second of open space to drill a bomb? ENERGY! At some point calling him the greatest shooter of all time felt more like an insult than a compliment because he affects the game in so many different ways. But don’t you forget for a single second that he’s still literally the most unstoppable shooter ever to where if you make a single hesitant mistake, he’s going to light you up like a Christmas tree.

How demoralizing is that for Rockets defenders to do all that running around just to get daggered and then look over at your coach on the sideline grinding his teeth and glowering saying stuff like, “Be better!” lmao. I’m imagining that, not an actual quote.

I was impressed by the stick-to-it-iveness of these Dubs, who refused to put their head down. Instead, they were buoyed by the championship resilience of Curry and Green, and kept hawking down the Rockets knowing eventually they’d find that breaking point.

Green in particular was phenomenal on the defensive end, that old greybeard still flying around to clog up passing lanes, harrass ballhandlers, and still find a way to protect the rim. I love this guy.

His 7 points, 8 rebounds, 4 assists, 2 steals, and 3 blocks more than made up for his 5 turnovers. It was a rockfight, and he kept hurling boulders at those jabronis.

Shenanigans

I don’t believe in this Rockets team. I have never believed in a Rockets team since Hakeem Olajuwon retired. I told you exactly how I felt about this Rockets team in that AI fever dream I created. The constant grabbing, tackling, scratching, and elbowing these guys believe in is just ridiculous.

This team always finds a way to do some shady crap to a Warriors playoff team and say something like “that’s just playoff basketball”. It’s the equivalent of getting sand kicked in your eyes during the biggest martial arts tournament of all time.

I wrote about this before, but I want to bang the drum for anyone who says “hey those old Rockets playoff series have nothing to do with this series.” How many pivotal playoff games have you watched where a star Warrior went down against Houston and Houston clearly had the advantage but the Dubs pulled it out? Hmm?

• Remember when Klay willed us with a Strength In Numbers win in Game 2 during 2016 when Steph was out?

• Or when, missing Finals MVP and Olympic Gold Medalist Andre Iguodala, we ousted Houston in Game 7 on their court after being down double-digits?

• What about when the Dubs stunned Houston in Game 6 in 2019, eliminating them despite losing Kevin freakin’ Durant that series?

Something about these Rockets always causes a bizarre injury that leads into them being right on the edge of stopping our dynasty, before the Warriors dig deep inside of themselves and Bloodsport kick the Rockets straight in the mouth.

Houston's young stars continued to confound. Jalen Green, who can be so dangerous (as he proved with that huge halftime shot over Draymond), finished with just 9 points on 4-11 shooting and an. ugly -14 plus/minus. In Games 1 and 3, we've seen that guy with no feel for the game version, while Game 2 showed the star who can destroy the Warriors. Credit Golden State's defense for that inconsistency.

Dillon Brooks is a fouling machine, had four fouls by halftime, and fouled out of this game. Amen Thompson, the Bay Area kid with high defensive potential, struggled offensively (5-16 FG), especially in that mid-post area where every time he shot Chase Center breathed a sigh of relief. And Fred VanVleet, for all his craftiness, remains Kraft cheese at the end of the day - 17 points on 14 shots with a team-worst -16 rating.

It takes so much energy to try to bottle up the Warriors, that it’s a true challenge to an opponent’s will and discipline. Many have tried, most have been destroyed by the effort to stop Stephen Curry in the Western Conference playoffs.

No Robin? No Problem

Okay so remember earlier I said Batman was tied up fighting off hella goons because Robin was too hurt to help? SHOUT OUT TO BUDDY “ALFRED” HIELD AND GARY PAYTON II AKA NIGHTWING.

Game 3 wasn't just the Steph Show. It was a masterclass in role players understanding exactly when their moment had arrived.

Let's start with Buddy "Alfred" Hield, who perfectly embodied the Warriors' championship DNA despite his playoff inexperience. With the team drowning offensively (just 27 points through 19 minutes) and down by 12, Hield decided it was time to remind everyone why he sits ninth all-time among active players with 2,127 career three-pointers.

He started reigning daggers when the Warriors needed him most in that first half. By halftime, a potentially momentum-crushing 12-point deficit had shrunk to just three. Hield finished with 17 points on 6-of-13 shooting, including 5-of-11 from downtown, with a bench-high +14 in his 29 minutes.

Then there's Gary Payton II, who essentially delivered the Rockets their death certificate in the fourth quarter: 11 points on a perfect 5-for-5 shooting in the final period, punctuated by an emphatic reverse dunk that had Chase Center in a frenzy.

He was the guy who knew exactly what to do as a release valve for Steph. But perhaps GP2's most heartwarming contribution came in his postgame comments: "Protect Jimmy at all costs. Have Jimmy's back." This wasn't just about winning a playoff game - it was about sending a message to their injured star that this team would hold down the fort until his return.

Also shout out to Post for grabbing 12 boards and dishing 4 dimes in 27 minutes as a starer. The rookie couldn’t find his shot, but the effort and heart was there against Houston’s imposing front line.

The Warriors' championship DNA has always been about these exact moments - when role players don't just fill gaps, but elevate into exactly what the team needs. Hield as the floor-spacer forcing defensive respect away from Curry. Payton as the defensive specialist who suddenly becomes a fourth-quarter closer.

For a team that finished 7th and struggled below .500 without Butler this season, Game 3 wasn't just a win. It was a statement: championship DNA doesn't retire when stars sit. It just finds new vessels to carry it forward.

Houston wouldn’t understand that.