2024-25 Western Conference First-Round Preview: No. 7 Golden State Warriors v. No. 2 Houston Rockets

2024-25 Western Conference First-Round Preview: No. 7 Golden State Warriors v. No. 2 Houston Rockets

The 2024-25 NBA postseason is officially here. For our final series preview, we will diving into the No. 7 Golden State Warriors against the No. 2 Houston Rockets, who are looking to capitalize in their first postseason berth under head coach Ime Udoka.

Let’s dive into it!

What to know about the Golden State Warriors:

Starters:

• Stephen Curry
• Brandin Podziemski
• Moses Moody
• Jimmy Butler
• Draymond Green

Key Reserves:

• Quinten Post
• Gary Payton II
• Buddy Hield
• Kevon Looney

Three months ago, after a hot start, the Warriors’ season looked dead in the water–until it wasn’t. After acquiring star forward Jimmy Butler, Golden State looked completely rejuvenated, finishing the regular season 23-8, including 22-5 when Butler, Stephen Curry and Draymond Green all played.

The Warriors also had one of the NBA’s top starting lineups to close the season with the aforementioned three, plus Brandin Podziemski and Moses Moody. In 449 minutes together, that quintet tallied a plus-19.2 NET with a 124.1 offensive rating. Butler was everything as advertised in his 30 games, while Curry has also looked six years younger, averaging 26.7 points on 47.6/41.0/94.5 shooting splits over his final 24 games.

Since the All-Star break, Golden State’s had the NBA’s best defense with the seventh-best offense. Draymond Green is overly confident in the team’s chances at winning the title, so it will be interesting to see if they can parlay their latest success into a deep, unexpected run.

What to know about the Houston Rockets:

Starters:

• Fred VanVleet
• Jalen Green
• Dillon Brooks
• Amen Thompson
• Alperen Sengun

Key Reserves:

• Tari Eason
• Cam Whitmore
• Steven Adams

The Rockets took a huge step in the right direction last season, improving 19 wins (22 to 41) in Ime Udoka’s first year at the helm. They didn’t take as big of a leap this year, but exceeded the 50-win mark for the first time since 2018-19.

Led by Amen Thompson, Dillon Brooks and Tari Eason, the Rockets finished with the fifth-best defense with the NBA. While they were the 12th-best offense, they were the No. 22 best halfcourt offense, according to Cleaning The Glass.

Before suffering a three-game losing streak to close the regular season, they were winners of six of their final seven and 15 of their last 16. Ironically enough, their last win came against Golden State, which was an ugly 106-96 win on April 6. This upcoming series is expected to be a masochist’s series with a lot of mucked off halfcourt offense, so I’m interested to see how Houston is able to generate offense.

Key Questions:

1. Can Stephen Curry navigate Houston’s overwhelming physicality–especially from Amen Thompson, who’s given him troubles this season?

If you don’t believe me, here’s Curry’s numbers against Thompson this season. It’s a small sample, but worth pointing out:

steph curry in the 41 possessions this season defended by amen thompson per @databallr — 9.1 pts/75, 9.1 ast/75 (0 tovs), 31.3% TS

steph has the passing to beat aggressive coverages but all time athletes like amen will give him trouble as a scorer + houston's switching/trapping pic.twitter.com/geSfkgyCdS

— ben pfeifer (@bjpf_) April 16, 2025

Thompson entered the NBA as one of the best defenders in his class, and now he’s quickly turned into one of the league’s top ten defenders in the NBA already in his second season. Curry is as good as anyone at self-creating off-ball. It’s not going to be an easy task to chase Curry around for seven games. But if anyone can, it’s Thompson.

2. How does Golden State slow down Houston’s frontcourt?

Houston has a massive size advantage in the frontcourt with Alperen Sengun and Steven Adams. The Rockets led the NBA in rebound percentage–by over two percentage points, a greater gap than No. 2 to 17–corralling north of 36 percent of their misses.

Sengun is also a handful to deal with because of his lethal combination of size, savviness and strength. Green is likely to take that assignment, but how will Golden State deal with Houston’s positional size at every position (minus Fred VanVleet).

3. How will Houston’s inexperience affect them in this series?

Curry and Green have been there and done that. They have won four titles. They know what it takes to win. Jimmy Butler has made two NBA Finals and three Eastern Conference Finals in five years. Houston’s most experienced player in the postseason is Fred VanVleet, a champion with Toronto in 2018-19.

But the Rockets are one of the youngest teams in the NBA without much postseason experience. Generating offense against Golden State will not be an easy task and when the offense gets mucked up in the halfcourt, how Houston is able to overcome that will be important to its success. We saw Detroit completely fall apart against New York on Saturday. If Houston wants to win this series, they can’t experience similar struggles.

Prediction: Warriors in 6

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