Barber: Warriors, Rockets must trust the force

OAKLAND - The key to victory in Game 3 of the NBA Western Conference final series has been revealed. Forget about the Hamptons 5 and P.J. Tucker's corner 3s and the 1-5 pick-and-roll. Do not speak to me of Stephen Curry's knee.

The path to a 2-1 series lead, and probably to the next NBA title, is force. Force, force, force.

Who says? Just about everyone involved in this battle between the two best teams in the league.

Asked after practice Saturday about getting Klay Thompson more open looks, Warriors coach Steve Kerr said: “We've got to play with more force and more pace. They had us on our heels the whole Game 2. We've got to flip that. We've got to put them on their heels.”

Less than 10 minutes later, Kerr vacated the hot seat that faced the media horde and was replaced by power forward Draymond Green. Someone asked Green about the Warriors' struggles against dribble penetration in Game 2. “I just don't think we ran to the ball,” he said. “We didn't play with the same force that we played with in Game 1.”

This was merely the continuation of a trend that Kerr and his counterpart, Rockets coach Mike D'Antoni, began earlier in the series. Both of them had uttered “the other F-word” at Friday practices, too. That time, Kerr said, “The team that brings the force and the energy and the desperation has the advantage.” On the other side of the water, at a gym in San Francisco, D'Antoni suggested that his team play “with the same force that we played offensively and defensively, knowing that they'll have more of a force on their side.”

Curry doesn't need a back screen to get open looks. He needs a force field.

After Game 2 in Houston, a 127-105 Rockets victory that injected intrigue into the series, Kerr and D'Antoni sounded as though they had invented a drinking game; everyone in America has to take a shot of Cuervo every time one of the coaches says “force.”

Kerr wasted no time that night. The first question he got was about his team failing to get into the groove offensively. “I just think this game was a matter of the Rockets bringing the force that's necessary to win a game, and we didn't,” he said.

But this was Houston's night. D'Antoni, following Kerr on the stage, used the word “force” no less than seven times.

“We played them with a lot more force on defense,” he said. “We played with a lot more force on offense.”

Well, no wonder the Warriors got their barbecue handed to them. D'Antoni had out-forced Kerr 7-3 on the podium.

OK, we get it. There's a single factor to watch for Sunday night, and it rhymes with H-O-R-S-E. A few questions, though: What is force? And how will we recognize the force when we see it? What are these hoopsters talking about?

I asked that to Green on Saturday. Adopting an impatient tone, he said, “Yeah, you can't get to this point and not play with force, so Steve is going to use it, I'm going to use it, D'Antoni is going to use it, James Harden is going to use it, Chris Paul is going to use it, Steph is going to use it, and the beat goes on. You can't not play with force at this time of the year, so everybody is going to use it.”

All right, well that clears that… uuhhh, wait. It actually doesn't. Janie McCauley, the indefatigable Associated Press reporter, noted Green's non-answer and followed up. But what does force mean?

“Play with force,” Green replied.

Isaac Newton's Second Law of Motion states that force is equal to the mass of an object multiplied by the acceleration of that object. But if that's what the basketball people were talking about, the Warriors would simply put Zaza Pachulia in a giant slingshot and fire him toward the Rockets' bench (which would be Pachulia's biggest contribution of the postseason).

That's not the idea here, so I persisted. I asked Kerr what he meant by the word. He was a bit more force-coming in his answer.

“It means being locked in defensively, making the right rotations, keeping guys from their tendencies, whether it's a strong hand or - you saw a play in the second quarter, I think, where (Houston's Trevor) Ariza caught the ball and just dribbled right through the lane, the Red Sea parted, and that's not force. The opposite of that play is where everybody rotates exactly to their man, the shot clock winds down. Maybe they even get a shot-clock violation, like they did Game 1. That's playing with force.”

Now we're getting somewhere. D'Antoni had also offered a clue, after Game 2.

“We have to play with force on defense,” he said. “And that translates over to offense. Now we're driving and kicking and driving and kicking and driving and kicking.”

I am not fluent in coachspeak, but I've picked up a little on my travels. This, as far as I can tell, is what they're talking about: The Warriors (and the Rockets) need to play with aggression. With assertiveness. When they have the ball, they need to set hard screens, move around like crazy, get to open spots and shoot decisively when they have the chance. On defense, they must get bodies on opponents. Get hands in their faces. Box out when a shot is up. Attack. Defend. Battle.

Which leads to another question. This is, in all likelihood, the most important series in the NBA this season. Certainly, it was the most anticipated. So why would any team, or any individual player, not bring force to every game in the West final?

I bumped into Jim Barnett at practice Saturday. Barnett played 11 NBA seasons, and he thrived in the job though he didn't have a great jump shot and, at 6-foot-4, was often smaller than the men he guarded. In other words, Barnett's career was built on force. So I asked him why in the world the Rockets seemed to sleep through Game 1, while the Warriors clocked out early in Game 2.

Here's what Barnett said: “Obviously, in Game 2, Houston had to win that game or they're not gonna win the series. They couldn't come back here and be down 0-2. And so they came and played with a sense of desperation. Like a caged animal, wild animal, that all of a sudden was set free. And sometimes the opponent thinks they're ready to play, and they think they're bringing intensity. But they haven't got it to the degree the opposition has.”

In other words, there is force and there is FORCE.

Which team is desperate now? The Warriors have the edge in overall talent, and the home-court advantage after a split in Houston. But the Rockets now claim momentum and a realistic path to victory.

Maybe they're both desperate, which would be wonderful. The Warriors brought force in Game 1. The Rockets brought force in Game 2. Both of those games were exciting for bursts, but ultimately petered out. Imagine what it might look like if the unstoppable force meets the other unstoppable force in Game 3. It will be spectacular.

You can reach columnist Phil Barber at 707-521-5263 or phil.barber@pressdemocrat.com. Follow him on Twitter: @Skinny_Post.