In his playoff debut this weekend Jalen Green said that playoff jitters got the best of him.
“The lights were bright, the crowd was here, the court looked huge,” he said. “So I couldn’t really get a chance to settle in. My legs was a little shaky.”
Things were much different on Wednesday as Green made eight three-pointers and scored 38 points to lead the Houston Rockets to a 109-94 victory over the Golden State Warriors in a testy matchup to even the first-round Western Conference series at one game apiece.
Photo: AFP
“I feel like a did a good job of answering back,” he said. “From the beginning my whole mindset from today was to go in and be aggressive and get back to being myself.”
The seventh-seeded Warriors never led and played short-handed for most of the night after Jimmy Butler left with a pelvis contusion after a hard fall on a foul late in the first quarter.
Green, the No. 2 pick in the 2021 draft, rebounded from a flop in his playoff debut, when he scored just seven points on three-of-15 shooting, with a dominant Game 2.
His eight three-pointers were two more than the No. 2-seeded Rockets made on six-of-29 shooting in a 95-85 Game 1 loss.
Alperen Sengun had 17 points and 16 rebounds for the Rockets. Tari Eason had 14 points off the bench.
Coach Ime Udoka raved about the combination of Green and Sengun.
“When they’re both rolling, we’re hard to beat,” he said.
Stephen Curry had 20 points and nine assists for the Warriors and became the 11th player in NBA history to reach 4,000 career playoff points. He finished the night with 4,017.
“He did a great job,” coach Steve Kerr said. “We just didn’t have enough tonight.”
Houston led by 20 with about 10 minutes left before the Warriors used a 9-0 run, with two threes from Quinten Post, to get within 11. Green was called for a flagrant foul on Draymond Green at the end of that run after he flailed an arm into his face.
The Rockets then used an 8-0 spurt, highlighted by a step-back trey from Jalen Green, to extend the lead to 99-80 with 5 minutes, 30 seconds remaining. Draymond Green received a technical foul in that stretch for arguing with officials and Eason received one for throwing a towel in an “unsportsmanlike manner.”
The loss of Butler, acquired from Miami in a February trade, was a huge blow to the Warriors after he had 25 points, seven rebounds and six assists in the series opener.
Kerr said it was too soon to speculate about the availability of Butler for Game 3.
The player was to undergo an MRI yesterday.
“Hopefully, Jimmy will be able to play, but if not, we have to go through our options and put together a plan,” Kerr said.
On top of Butler’s injury, the Warriors were also hampered by Brandin Podziemski’s stomach ailment.
He missed most of the first half dealing with the problem and was scoreless in 14 minutes after scoring 14 points in Game 1.
In Boston, Jaylen Brown scored a game-high 36 points as the Celtics overcame the absence of leading scorer Jayson Tatum to beat the visiting Orlando Magic 109-100 in Game 2 of their Eastern Conference first-round series.
In Cleveland, Ohio, Donovan Mitchell scored 17 of his 30 points in the fourth quarter, while Darius Garland contributed 21 points and nine assists as the Cavaliers held off the visiting Miami Heat 121-112 to take a 2-0 lead in their Eastern Conference first-round series.
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