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Kendra Andrews, ESPN
HOUSTON — Golden State Warriors players Draymond Green and Klay Thompson stood, faced the crowd in Houston, and yelled “Warrrriors, come out to play!”
The phrase was the same one Rockets forward Tari Eason wore on his shirt pregame. But after the Warriors beat the Rockets 133-110 — a game with massive play-in implications — Eason excited the arena shirtless, with just a vest and a big diamond chain on.
“That’s pretty lame, especially if you’re not even playing,” Thompson said. “It’s one thing if you are out there playing, out there competing and you can back it up. But you’re just going to be trolling from the sideline? What are you doing? The time we talk smack, we’re out there competing. That’s all I have to say about that.”
Green appreciated the smack-talk element of it all, but shared Thompson’s sentiment that if you are going to taunt, you have to back it up on the court. Eason has been shut down for the rest of the season with a benign growth on his lower leg bone that required surgery.
“I love it (but) if you’re going to say that, you got to play,” Green said. “You can’t come out and say that and not play. But I know what type of player he is. He welcomes all of that. He welcomes the challenge and welcomes the fight … hopefully next year he’ll say the same thing and we both won’t be fighting for the play-in, we’ll be fighting for the seeding.”
The Warriors’ win over the Rockets all but locked up at least a top-10 seed for Golden State, fending off Houston’s ferocious run to snatch it away from them.
Just nine days ago on March 24, Houston was just one game behind Golden State in the standings after winning their eighth straight in what would be an 11-game win streak.
Now, the Warriors are up four games on the Rockets with six games left in the regular season. But because Golden State holds the season tie-breaker, it’s really five games.
“(Securing the top-10) allows you to now focus on what you can do to move up,” Green said. “When you’re just trying to solidify, you take everything step by step. The first step is to solidify ourselves a chance, give ourselves a chance. Once you get yourself a chance, it’s like what’s next? What’s the best chance we can give ourselves?”
Mathematically, the Rockets aren’t officially eliminated from the play-in.
In order for Houston to still make the play-in tournament it would either have to win five of its six final games and have the Warriors lose out, or win all six of their games and have Golden State drop at least five.
But, the Warriors are playing some of their most cohesive basketball of the season, so the odds of them falling off that much is unlikely.
After stringing together five consecutive wins with a defensive backbone, it was the Warriors’ offense that led them in Houston. Thompson finished 29 points on 11-of-15 shooting, including seven 3-pointers, while Stephen Curry also scored 29 points. Rookie center Trayce Jackson-Davis scored a career-high 20 points on 8-of-10 shooting.
After Thursday’s win, the Warriors sit 1 1/2 games behind the Los Angeles Lakers in ninth place, two games behind the Sacramento Kings in eighth and three games behind the New Orleans Pelicans in seventh.
Warriors coach Steve Kerr said they hope the teams above them in the standings tally up some losses to help the Warriors with upward mobility, but they also understand they have to help themselves out — especially with two games against the Dallas Mavericks (in the first seed) and Lakers coming up.
“Whatever the motivation has been for each win individually – whether you are looking below or looking up (in the standings) – keep looking there,” Curry said. “It’s a matter of us maintaining this momentum because more than likely, it’s going to be you have to play one game to stay alive. I don’t care what anybody is looking at, but just keep looking at it, keep our focus on what we’ve been doing because the results have been able to show we’re locked in and motivated.”