HOUSTON -- Silence enveloped the Houston locker room shortly after the Rockets fell 95-85 to the Golden State Warriors in Game 1 of their first-round Western Conference playoff series Sunday night.
Down the hall in front of the assembled media, Rockets coach Ime Udoka discussed how his team "guarded well enough to win."
"[If] you hold someone to 95 [points], you'd expect to win if you have a decent offensive night," Udoka said after Houston scored its fewest points of the season, and its fewest in a playoff game since Game 3 of the 2018 Western Conference finals, also against the Warriors.
"Some guys did struggle offensively -- you're not going to overreact to one game," Udoka said when asked if he might change the starting lineup.
"But if guys do play better, we have a chance there. Ten-point loss and like I said, holding somebody to 95; it was an offensively poor showing. The defense was good enough. But I'm not going to overreact to that game. It's some of those guys' first times and we had our chances."
Five players (Amen Thompson, Alperen Sengun, Jalen Green, Tari Eason and Jabari Smith Jr.) in Houston's eight-man rotation made their playoff debuts.
"It's my first [playoff] game," Green said. "I'm not too worried about it. I got a taste of what it was, and I've just got to answer back. I've got to take my time, make the right reads, get the pacing I want and just hunt the shots that I need to get. I feel like I've already seen what they're doing out there throughout 82 games. Just got to be better. We're doing our job defensively. We've just got to score the ball, and we can't leave [Sengun] out there by himself just to score the ball."
The Warriors employed an aggressive defensive game plan that featured plenty of physicality while sending two defenders to the ball handler in pick-and-rolls. In addition to jamming the passing lanes and the paint, Golden State defended Sengun one-on-one for much of the night. He finished with a team-high 26 points. Dillon Brooks and Smith contributed 11 points apiece as Houston's second-highest scorers.
Golden State forced Houston to settle for dreadful shots. Fred VanVleet and Green became the third starting backcourt since 2000 to each shoot 25% or worse (minimum 15 attempts) in the same playoff game, joining the Milwaukee duo of Eric Bledsoe and Khris Middleton (2019 against Toronto) and Chicago's Derrick Rose and Jimmy Butler (2015 against the Bucks).
Entering Sunday night, Warriors superstar Stephen Curry was 0-10 in road playoff games in which his team failed to score 100 points. Houston helped Curry, who scored a game-high 31 points, secure his first win under those conditions.
"We just didn't execute," VanVleet said. "Maybe the physicality was an issue. But I thought we matched that for the most part. They definitely heat the ball up, but they didn't do anything differently tonight than they've done all season. They heat the ball up. They crowd the paint. They obviously tried to take Jalen out."
They succeeded, too, limiting Green to seven points on 3-of-15 shooting, the worst field goal percentage (20%) by a Rocket with at least 15 field goal attempts since 2019, when James Harden shot 15% in Game 3 of the opening round of the playoffs against the Utah Jazz.
Houston shot 39.1% from the field and was 6-of-29 from 3-point range Sunday. The Rockets committed 17 turnovers that Golden State turned into 25 points.
Despite the Warriors taking a 23-point lead in the third quarter, the Rockets gradually whittled it down to four points with 2:38 left on VanVleet's 3-pointer off an assist from Thompson.
Houston finished with an offensive rebounding percentage of 46.6%, the highest percentage in a postseason loss since Game 6 of the 2014 opening-round playoff series between the Rockets and Portland Trail Blazers. Houston lost in six games on a series-ending buzzer-beater.
The Rockets also squandered numerous fast-break opportunities. Golden State outscored Houston 16-4 in fast-break points, but the Rockets went just 2-of-7 in those opportunities after ranking seventh during the regular season in fast-break scoring (17.0).
"They are not a typical modern NBA team in terms of spreading you out, playing fast, shooting a million 3s," Warriors coach Steve Kerr said. "They're kind of old-school. In many ways, they're in the image of their coach. Ime, he was grimy as a player. He was tough, physical and that's what Houston is. It felt like 1997 out there to me, [a] completely different NBA game than what we're used to, and we've got to be ready for that. This is what this series is going to be."