Against the aggressive Rockets, Warriors’ hopes rest on solving a familiar problem

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HOUSTON — Pat Spencer was a revelation.

The little-used Golden State Warriors guard, who spent most of the year at the end of the bench, made his playoff debut Wednesday in the second quarter. Jimmy Butler normally runs those minutes, but he was out after a nasty fall bruised his pelvis. Brandin Podziemski was also sidelined with an illness that required an IV at halftime. And Stephen Curry simply had to rest. So the Warriors’ offense, in Game 2 of their first-round series against the Houston Rockets, was handed to Spencer.

He immediately began attacking the Rockets’ defense. Houston has been relentlessly aggressive, applying pressure on ball-handlers way out by the 3-point line. So Spencer did what you’re supposed to do against such defense.

Aggression demands reciprocation. A counterattack literally includes attacking. It just took a little wiggle and some confidence with the ball. Once he got past the first defender, it was just improvising against a scattered defense magnetized to Curry. The last step was finishing.

Spencer ended up with nine points in just over eight minutes. He got up six shots and assisted on another. He was showing the way.

Pat Spencer
Up & in

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— Golden State Warriors (@warriors) April 24, 2025

Sure, the Warriors could get hot from 3. But outside of that, the answer is proverbially pushing back against the aggression.

“They pressure so hard. In order to counter that,” Spencer said, “you’ve got to get somebody getting downhill to the paint. They didn’t collapse, and they gave up like three or four layups.”

The obvious answer for the Warriors is a better Steph Curry. He’s been the blowtorch to the Rockets’ plans for a decade now. The villain of their nightmares. Curry is 16-2 all-time when he scores 30 or more on Houston, with the last loss in 2019. The Warriors have won 12 straight against the Rockets when he scores at least 25 points.

Houston’s game plan and bent declare its awareness. A team led by head coach Ime Udoka and featuring Dillon Brooks and Fred VanVleet — who’ve all had playoff battles with Curry in the past — knows the imminent danger of No. 30.

But Golden State’s 109-94 Game 2 loss, leveling the series, was anchored in Houston’s ability to limit that danger, keep Curry from burning them again. He helped their cause Wednesday with six turnovers and a couple of missed layups, and by not asserting himself in the couple of moments where the Rockets seemed vulnerable.

But he’s also facing a Houston defense obsessed with his demise and one given a longer leash to restrict his movement. They’re holding him and grabbing him, shoving him and swarming him. They’re sending a second defender and a third, with the fourth always ready. They’re increasing the contact, normalizing the physicality so only the most egregious gets called.

It’s not a new scheme. Nor are the answers novel. Somebody has to punish defenses for such imbalance.

So the Warriors’ season comes down to answering the question that once plagued it. They have to find someone who punishes Houston for selling out on Curry.

They found the answer in Jimmy Butler. But when he landed on his tailbone in the first quarter, with a thud that made viewers squirm, the concern was dislodged from the past and reappeared. As the Warriors struggled to score against the aggression of the Rockets’ defense, this familiar quandary returned.

Steve Kerr even turned to an old solution, dusting off Jonathan Kuminga.

His five drives were second only to Curry’s seven. But Kuminga was 0-for-5 on his drives — and Curry 0-for-3 — a reasonable outcome after being shelved.

The Warriors were 14-for-30 in the paint and just 12-for-21 inside of five feet.

“I feel like that’s been my job,” Kuminga said, “and I feel like that’s something I could do at the highest level. It’s just opportunities and getting your chances. Hopefully they come back around. And I’m gonna be ready when it comes around.”

Golden State was back in search of a comfortable offensive creator outside of Curry. It’s how they can eventually loosen the defense for Curry so he can do what he does. Burn Houston.

Butler’s injury, if it keeps him out of Game 3, leaves the Warriors back in search of answers. They’d be perhaps worse off than before because at least then they had Andrew Wiggins. Now, they’d be asking someone to elevate to a larger role.

“We always figure it out,” Warriors center Kevon Looney said. “It’s not the first time a team tried that game plan. We’ve seen it before. We’ll make adjustments like we always do.”

Their complementary players rely so much on the offensive scheme or the gravity of Curry to create open shots for them. That reality was highlighted by a Rockets defense that embodies the spirit of playoff basketball, where scoring is much harder because of a more intense and focused resistance.

Watching Houston’s Jalen Green, a known soft spot on defense, clamp down and intensely pressure the ball, fully bought into the Rockets’ mentality, was a picture of what the Warriors are up against.

A healthy Podziemski is a reasonable solution. But this feels like a job for Kuminga.

In the Warriors’ first three games against Houston this season, he totaled 76 points on 54 shots. At his best, he matches their verve, and his game is best when he’s attacking the rim. The Rockets don’t have a traditional shot blocker. But they have wings who can block shots, so quickness and strength are imperative when finishing at the rim. That points to Kuminga.

After Butler went down, Curry went over to Kuminga on the bench. Knowing this might mean minutes for Kuminga, Curry offered some words of encouragement.

Kuminga was initially groomed for this role. But the presence of Butler has exiled him from the rotation. His inefficiencies elsewhere render his strengths moot in the mind of his coaches. But now they need his strengths. Curry needs them, if he’s going to burn Houston again.

“Whether Jimmy’s out there or not, it feels like it could swing a different way,” Curry said, “So that’s the challenge, and it’s always been for him — to see the pictures, understand the intensity that’s out there, try to be in the right spots defensively, and then when he has opportunities to be aggressive on the offensive end, take ’em.”

(Top photo of Stephen Curry passing away from three Rockets defenders during Wednesday’s Game 2: Tim Warner / Getty Images)

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