No matter how well you play in the regular season, it's the playoffs that determine whether or not you're going to win an NBA championship. Just ask the 2015-2016 Golden State Warriors how well winning 73 games worked out for them. If you get hot at the right time, you can ride the waves of success all the way to the NBA Finals and right now, it looks like the Houston Rockets are one of the teams who could do it. They won the first two games of their first-round series against the Utah Jazz in convincing fashion are playing well on both sides of the court.
Rockets superstar James Harden told reporters after last night's game that he feels like the team is really starting to reach their peak, according to Sporting News.
"The series starts now. We have to go on the road and have the same energy - especially on the defensive end. The offense, I'm not worried about. We've been a great offensive team all year, but defensively, we're locked in," Harden explained. "When I talk about 'where we want to be,' that's because of our defense. If we guard like that and get into their bodies and rebound the basketball and push the tempo in transition, it's pretty hard to beat us."
If the Rockets were to close out their series against Utah, they would be on a collision course with the Golden State Warriors who they pushed to seven games in the Western Conference final last season. Unfortunately for the Rockets, they eventually lost that game and the Warriors won the NBA Championship.
