Warriors survive Game 2 scare; defeat Rockets 99-98 to go up 2-0 in series

OAKLAND - For most of 48 minutes Thursday night at Oracle Arena, the Warriors had no answer for James Harden. Finally, on the last play of the game, they found a solution.

Up by a point as the seconds dwindled, Klay Thompson and Stephen Curry trapped Harden, the Houston Rockets’ prolific scorer, just beyond the 3-point arc, and the two Warriors were able to strip the ball away.

“We needed a stop,” Golden State forward Draymond Green said. “And hey, the two guys who will get us a lot of credit for their offense made the best defensive play of the night.”

The Warriors clung to a 99-98 victory, taking a two-games-to-none lead in the NBA Western Conference finals. They head to Houston with a chance to close out the series and advance to the NBA final before they even return to Oakland.

That scenario was in doubt in the fourth quarter of Game 2 as the Rockets turned an eight-point deficit into a one-point gap in the final two minutes. When Houston center Dwight Howard prevented Harrison Barnes from scoring a reverse layup with eight seconds left, the visitors had a final chance. The Warriors steeled themselves for a stop.

“Everybody hauled ass,” Green said. “… They call it a home run trot when you kind of jog back. That was a championship trot right there.”

The Rockets had the ball exactly where they wanted it - in Harden’s hands.

“We’ll take our best player coming downhill,” Houston coach Kevin McHale said.

But Harden wasn’t able to launch a shot. It was one of the few things that went wrong all night for the pharaoh-bearded guard. He finished with 38 points, 10 rebounds and nine assists, missing a triple-double by one assist for the second consecutive game. Thompson guarded Harden for most of the game, but Warriors coach Steve Kerr also tried Barnes and Leandro Barbosa. Nothing really worked, even when Thompson got a hand in Harden’s face.

“It’s not easy, but I don’t let myself get frustrated because it’s a long game,” Thompson said. “And it doesn’t matter if James has 40 or five, it’s whether we win or lose.”

Harden’s co-honoree on the recently announced All-NBA First Team, Golden State’s Stephen Curry, once again was equally brilliant. Curry scored 33 points and nailed five 3-pointers. He was 13 of 21 from the field. Harden was 13 of 21, too.

The top-seeded Warriors were heavily favored to win this series, and here they stand at 2-0. Yet neither game at Oracle has been remotely easy.

In Game 1 on Tuesday, Golden State had fought back from an early deficit with a 25-6 run to close out the second quarter. Thursday, it was the Warriors who jumped out to a big lead - they went up 49-32 on Barnes’ 3-pointer at the 7:43 mark of the second quarter - only to see the Rockets end the half on a 23-6 run.

It was 55-55 at halftime as Harden blocked Green’s attempt at the buzzer, and neither side led by more than eight points for the rest of the game.

While Curry-vs.-Harden was the marquee event (though they don’t actually guard one another), there was a serious heavyweight undercard as Warriors center Andrew Bogut battled it out with Howard.

Howard had sprained his knee in Game 1, and the Rockets didn’t even announced he’d play in Game 2 until about a half-hour before tipoff. But the eight-time All-Star wound up playing 40 minutes, scoring 19 points and grabbing a game-high 17 rebounds.

Howard was a game-changer, but so was Bogut, who had 14 points, eight rebounds and five blocked shots in 30 minutes. He blocked Harden twice on drives to the rim, delighting the Oracle crowd.

“Yeah, it was a total reversal from Game 1, when the game went small,” Kerr said. “This was more of a street fight, more of a traditional game involving big guys protecting the rim and hard fouls and blocked shots. I thought Bogut was terrific.”

If the Warriors had an Achilles’ heel in this game, it was sloppiness. They finished with 17 turnovers, including seven in the first quarter, allowing Houston to stay in the game. Curry alone had six turnovers.

And yet the Warriors survived. A wave of excitement is building as the team travels to Houston, looking for its first NBA championship in 40 years. A 2-0 lead isn’t a cinch, but it’s pretty good. The only Warriors team ever to go up two games to none and lose a postseason series was the 1969 team, against the Lakers.

The Rockets, meanwhile, must attempt to put a pair of frustrating losses behind them, and to rely on the Toyota Center crowd to re-energize their title hopes.

“They feel like they lost two games that they should have won,” Green said. “I feel like we almost gave this one away, though, contrary to their belief.”

As the historians will tell you, Draymond, it’s the victors who write the textbooks.