With All-Star guards Steph Curry and Klay Thompson back from injury, the 2020-21 Golden State Warriors will likely look closer to the group that won the Western Conference for five straight years from 2015 through 2019 — as opposed to the one with the NBA’s worst record in 2019-20.
In the last two years of their reign, the West team that came closest to knocking them out was the Houston Rockets. Three-time All-Star and NBA champion Draymond Green certainly seems to have noticed.
During a new appearance on Ernie Johnson and Charles Barkley’s The Steam Room podcast, Green made the case for the Rockets as a sleeper team to win the West in the upcoming 2020-21 season. Draymond said:
The team I think people are going to be sleeping on coming out of the West is Houston. They got Russ, they got James, and obviously, both can go for 40 or 50 on any given night.
They got a bunch of shooters and they are going to create problems for people because they are playing a switching defense, and the first thing that people do is they try to pound the ball inside.
You’re not just going to run over James Harden in the post, you’re not going to run over P.J. Tucker. I think a lot of teams will make that mistake, and Houston will be sneaky.
The Rockets aren’t in the perceived top tier of West contenders, which is usually comprised of the defending champion Los Angeles Lakers; the potentially resurgent Warriors; and the star-studded Clippers. After a disappointing loss to the Lakers in five games in the second round of the 2020 playoffs, it’s easy to understand the national skepticism.
Then again, there were some extenuating circumstances. In particular, Westbrook was never the same player in the 2019-20 season after COVID-19 delayed his arrival to the NBA’s “bubble,” training camp. From there, he strained his right quad in just his third game back.
With a healthy Westbrook in 2021, and perhaps improved chemistry in his second year alongside Harden in Houston, the Rockets could have a roadmap to a potential breakthrough. (The bizarre and unexpected loss of Danuel House Jr. in the 2020 playoffs didn’t help matters, either.)
It’s also possible that a new coach might unlock things with the veteran roster that Mike D’Antoni was not able to over his four seasons.
In order for the Rockets to win the West, there’s a decent chance that they will have to defeat the Warriors in the playoffs — which they’ve yet to do in the Harden era. But they’ve certainly come closer than any other West team to doing it, as evidenced by the six- and seven-game series in 2019 and 2018, and that seems to have earned Green’s respect.
