Golden State "giants" to be tested after injury to Kevin Durant

At the dawn of the last day of the regular season, the Houston Rockets did not know whether they would finish the night as No. 4 seeds of the Western Conference or at the jump until the second place.

A group of spectators insisted that finding a way to stay in 4th place, even if it was to lose intentionally, would be Houston's best bet to dethrone its main rival, the Golden State Warriors. According to the reasoning, a No. 4 seed would line up the Rockets to face the Warriors in the second round, rather than in the conference finals, thus reducing the fatigue that the overworked superstar of the team, James Harden, would accumulate before the grueling match. , while increasing the likelihood that his frail and aging leader, Chris Paul, would stay healthy for the showdown.

In order for beginners to worry about their age, fatigue and injuries rather than the two defenders, they seemed to be rather late.

But now, Houston, who finished with the fourth seed, seems in top form in the second round and gives the Warriors a fight for their lives.

And sustainability has become Golden State's main concern, star striker Kevin Durant, who has been even more dominant in these series than in previous years, was injured in the calf Wednesday in the fifth game, which should keep him at home. Away from the match. of the series, if not longer.

The quest for a fourth championship in five seasons and a rare three-lap round will be challenged by the speed with which coaches and players of Golden State can adapt. They will enter Friday's game 6 with a three-game advantage against two in the series, but also with the Houston audience tuned.

The results could It highlights some crucial decisions taken by coach Steve Kerr in recent seasons about the so-called load management of his players, concept that he adopted before the sentence was popularized and followed, even as the league cracked down on the rest of the players in good health during the regular season games.

In the first test of life without Durant – the last 14 minutes of Wednesday's win – Golden State had initially struggled, but shot to the brink in the fourth quarter, as Origin of the dynasty – Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green – was trying his luck a 104-99 win. This resurgence prompted Kerr to invoke the words of Jürgen Klopp of Liverpool, who the day before had described his players as "giants", modifying this description with an adjective unfit for publication.

"I know how he feels," Kerr said of Klopp, borrowing the wrong word to describe his own group of giants. "It was an incredible win tonight."

To beat the Rockets in Houston on Friday, however, or to win at home in a possible seventh game on Sunday, will require a sudden adjustment of the team's strategy that relies more and more on Durant's ability to resume the games. The seeds of a dynasty were of course present when Durant arrived for the 2016-17 season, but the core of the team was Younger and supported by a much deeper bench in the previous two seasons, when Kerr took over and led the franchise to two league finals and his first title in 40 years.

Kerr seemed deeply aware of the changing demands of his team. He learned a lot about the importance of rest during the 2015-16 season, when his team gave it all to set a regular season record with 73 wins, before running out of steam against a cooler team. more hungry Cleveland Cavaliers a championship by wiping out a 3-1 deficit in the final.

Even N.B.A. Commissioner Adam Silver, who strongly opposed the rest of the healthy players, acknowledged the value of rest Thursday, saying the league may need to rethink its 82-game regular season.

"Maybe there are too many games on the player's body," he said.

To this end, Kerr has worked in recent years to limit the number of minutes his players have in the regular season. As a result, the difference in workload between Rockets and Warriors over the past five years is probably not as important as one would expect. especially considering the Warriors have played 94 playoff games in the past five seasons compared to the Rockets 60.

Each team employs a basic rotation of seven people, with a cast of rotating characters in eighth place. Both teams have several players in their thirties. The Rockets are actually two of the three oldest players in the series, P.J. Tucker and Paul, who are 34 years old, one year younger than the main player in the series, the warrior Andre Iguodala.

The Golden State core of seven players has amassed a total of 82,994 minutes (regular season and combined series) over the last five seasons, while Houston has seven, including Iman Shumpert only passing the final phase of the conference those years, with 80 828 minutes.

This leaves on average only 62 extra minutes per player and per season, or about two action games for a typical beginner.

The difference is that Houston has asked his players to carry a much heavier burden in the regular season. Harden leads all players in the series with 14,471 regular-season minutes in those five seasons, 1,543 more than Thompson, the most-used Golden State player. In total, the Rockets core has recorded an additional 5,028 minutes in the past five regular seasons, while the Golden State core is 7,194 minutes in the playoffs.

The imbalance is even greater among starters, the five starting Golden State players, including Durant, nearly doubled their Houston counterparts in the playoff minutes.

The focus on the playoffs is more evident than in Green, the center of the Warriors' small ball, who apparently adopted Shaquille O. Neal's methods using the regular season as a camp. prolonged practice before seriously embarking on the playoffs. .

Under the leadership of Golden State General Manager Bob Myers, Green lost 23 pounds in six weeks at the end of the season and has appeared more alive than ever at another time in recent years. Evaluating his game in Wednesday's win, 29-year-old Green did not hide the fact that he considered the regular season a warm-up.

"I know I'm paid to play this way during the playoffs," he said. "My teammates expect me to play this way during the playoffs."

It remains to know how much it took Golden State to win Wednesday's win. The anticipated benefits of Houston's reconciliation earlier than last year have largely failed.Paul remains healthy and Harden finishes his closing games – although it's interesting to note that Harden dropped considerably in the fourth quarter on Wednesday. Now, the Rockets have a real asset to neutralize the dominant team of the league, which changes its rotation and gives more minutes to players like Kevon Looney and Jonas Jerebko, who are much less experienced than the stars of the team.

Curry, who won the league's Most Valuable Player award in the two seasons leading up to Durant's arrival, will be largely responsible for the pressure. A group of Curry fans had long been waiting for the return to the Golden State's offensive center. Stimulated by the podcast "Light Years ", they popularized the phrase" #stephbetter "on Twitter to insist that Curry's shot on goal and the attention he is getting from defenses reinforces Golden State's dominance of Durant's mastery.