West Conf. Finals - Game 5: Golden State Warriors 94-98 Houston Rockets - 5 Talking Points
After losing Game 1 at home, not many gave the Houston Rockets a chance to win this series. Now, they've won 3 out of 4 and are one win away from getting to the NBA Finals for the first time in over 20 years.
Eric Gordon led the way with 24 points, including 10 in the 4th quarter and Chris Paul had 20. Kevin Durant led Golden State with 29 points but disappeared late in the game and the defending champs now find themselves on the brink of elimination at home in Game 6.
Here are the talking points from this one:
#5 The turnovers pile up for Golden State, again
It's quite the simple equation for Golden State really. Don't turn the ball over a lot and you'll usually win the game. They don't like to do things that way apparently. The Warriors turned it over 16 times in this one, the same as Game 4 and it hurt them in a big way, as the offense hardly ever got into a flow thanks to constantly turning the ball over.
As I mentioned before, turnovers determine a lot of games for the Warriors and this series has been no different. They've turned it over 15 or more times thrice in this series and have lost all 3 games. On the flip side, they've turned it over less than 10 times twice and won both games. It'd be one thing if the Rockets were forcing them to turn it over at this rate, but a lot of these turnovers are just careless passes and they have got to get it together for Game 6 or Houston is winning this series.