The Warriors Put A Dagger In The Rockets After An Apparent Backcourt Violation Wasn’t Called

The Golden State Warriors entered Monday night’s Game 1 as narrow underdogs, at least from a Las Vegas perspective, against the Houston Rockets. Through much of the night, however, it was clear that the defending champions are considered to be the favorites to repeat and Steve Kerr’s team used an explosive third quarter to pull away and hold off Houston for a potentially pivotal opening victory.

Along the way, though, the Rockets did threaten to climb back into the festivities, slashing the visitors’ lead to just seven points with approximately four minutes to go. Then, Houston appeared to benefit from a backcourt violation that would have given James Harden and company the ball back with a chance to cut the margin to five, or even four, points.

The whistle, however, never blew despite protests from the Rockets.

Predictably, the Warriors took full advantage of the apparent mishap, swinging the ball around to perfection until Klay Thompson buried a (wide) open three-pointer that doubled as something of a dagger to the evening.

From there, Golden State was never threatened and it was quite odd to see a scenario in which a fairly obvious non-call contributed to such a swing. It would be unwise to indicate that the Warriors “needed” the benefit of the whistle to pull away here as, well, Golden State felt like the better team throughout the night. Still, the Rockets could be filing this one away for the future, especially through the prism of dropping a game that they could have (potentially) competed for with the help of one call.