Few NBA teams exhibited more growth in the 2024-25 regular season compared to the campaign prior than the Houston Rockets.
In Ime Udoka’s second season as the team’s head coach, Houston won 52 games — its most victories in a single campaign since 2018-19 season — and finished as the No. 2 seed in the Western Conference.
Additionally, the Rockets qualified for the 2025 NBA Playoffs, marking their first playoff appearance since 2020.
Rockets star guard Jalen Green might be Houston’s best offensive player, and he shared that Houston has very high expectations for this year’s playoffs. Specifically, he said the team expects to represent the West in the NBA Finals later this year.
“I feel like we going to make a deep run into this,” Green told The Ringer’s Logan Murdock. “Our expectation is get to the Finals.”
Green led the Rockets in points per game during the regular season, but he didn’t play at the top of his game offensively in Game 1 of the team’s first-round series against the Golden State Warriors. In his playoff debut, he mustered just seven points on 3-of-15 shooting from the field and 0-of-4 from 3-point range.
Houston also lost the contest by 10 points at home and is now in a 0-1 series hole.
The Rockets may fall very short of their Finals expectations if they can’t get back in the win column when they play the Warriors again on Wednesday night. After all, a loss would put Houston in a 0-2 hole as the series shifts to Golden State for Games 3 and 4.
Green needs to put together a bounce-back performance if the Rockets want to even up the best-of-seven series at one game apiece, but Houston’s defense needs to do a better job of keeping Warriors guard Stephen Curry and forward Jimmy Butler in check as well.
The Rockets had no answers for them in Game 1, as the Warriors’ duo combined for more than half of Golden State’s 95 points in the contest.
Hopefully, Green and company can respond to their disappointing Game 1 performance with a resounding victory at Toyota Center in Game 2. Such an outcome would likely give the Rockets a boost in confidence before they take on Curry and the Warriors in a hostile environment away from home.
