The Golden State Warriors and Houston Rockets clash tonight at the Toyota Center in Houston in Game 7 for a trip to the NBA Finals and the right to take on LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers.
The Warriors will not have Andre Iguodala for this game due to a lower leg contusion, while for the Rockets the status of Chris Paul is up in the air with a hamstring injury that he suffered during Game 5 and forced him to miss Game 6. Even if he sees any action is difficult to picture him being too much of a factor tonight.
The Warriors are playing on the road after conceding home-court advantage to the Rockets all the way back in early March as they decided to prioritize health and getting into rhythm ahead of the postseason.
Now that it has come to a Game 7 on the road is up to the Warriors to prove that they can handle the pressure and defeat the talented Rockets in their own arena.
The Warriors played a thrilling Game 6 at Oracle Arena in Oakland as they fell behind by 17 before coming back to win and earn the right to play tonight’s game at the Toyota Center.
It’s unlikely they will be able to repeat the feat tonight if they fall behind by such a big margin and the Warriors, for certain, will not win by 29 points tonight.
If they want to avoid that scenario the Warriors will have to take advantage of Paul’s likely absence to get off to a big start and also take better care of the ball to avoid 15 turnovers or more as they have not won when they turn the ball over 15 or more times.
Both teams will have to watch out for fouls because none of them want to have key players in foul trouble early in the game, so they will have to be disciplined.
Interestingly the Warriors have lost all the games in this series when they have 20 or more fouls, so they will have to watch out as the refs are more than likely to call the game in favor of the Rockets now that they are the home team.
