Draymond Green of the Golden State Warriors gestures against the Houston Rockets in the second quarter at Chase Center on April 06, 2025 in San Francisco, California.
Eakin Howard/Getty Images
The Warriors-Rockets series promises to be a smashmouth affair, but as Game 1 got closer, some began to wonder how the Dubs will handle Houston’s physicality.
On Friday’s episode of “Get Up” on ESPN, sports talk radio host Alan Hahn predicted that the Rockets will get under Golden State’s skin to open up the series.
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“As much as we love them, they’re probably going to have more techs than wins in this series against the Houston Rockets,” he said.
Hahn added that Amen Thompson is “going to give Steph Curry hell in this series,” and the defense will frustrate not just Curry, but also head coach Steve Kerr, Draymond Green and Jimmy Butler. He then noted the Dubs’ free-throw woes — Golden State ranked 25th in free-throw percentage this season — combine with a notable stat in a concerning way: Houston’s opponents have the worst free-throw percentage in the league against them.
This isn’t too far off on what Rockets player Dillon Brooks implied earlier in the week when he rejected the idea that he’d get tossed in this series.
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“I don’t know,” Brooks told reporters. “I’m not gonna get ejected. I’ll leave that to somebody else.”
That’s from one firecracker in this series, but then there’s the one on the other side of this matchup: Green. Kerr told reporters during a pregame press conference that he hasn’t talked to his confrontational 35-year-old forward about potential chippiness, but he trusts Green’s temperament.
“I haven’t said anything about that to Dray, he’s a four-time champion,” Kerr said. “He knows a big part of this series is staying poised and playing through the physicality and matching the physicality that Houston’s bringing.”
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Of course, the Dubs coach is talking about a guy whose end-of-career highlights will include all the different ways he’s literally attacked people on a basketball court. It’s one thing for Green to know he needs to stay poised, but it’s another for him to actually maintain that composure. That’ll almost certainly get put to the test at tip-off for Game 1 of this first-round series.
April 20, 2025
