5 Reasons Golden State Warriors Shouldn’t Panic After Game 5 Loss vs. Houston Rockets

With their 2024-25 campaign on the line, the Houston Rockets absolutely annihilated the Golden State Warriors on Wednesday, 131-116.

Extended garbage time made the final score look a lot closer than the contest actually was.

From the get-go, the young Rockets were locked in defensively, drilling jump shots and generally up for the challenge of their first elimination game together.

But they're not out of the woods yet. And it's not quite time for the Warriors to panic.

Golden State is still up 3-2 with the next game at the Chase Center. The five reasons it should still feel OK about this series are below.

It goes without saying that just about any team would prefer to be at home than on the road.

Sleeping in your own bed before a game is far better than being in a hotel. Your entire routine is easier to stick to at home. Players are more accustomed to the atmosphere in their own arenas.

And for the Warriors, specifically, there are numbers that support this conclusion.

During his career, Stephen Curry is 60-17 in home playoff games. His three-point percentage in home playoff games is almost three full points higher.

Draymond Green, meanwhile, has career playoff averages of 12.0 points, 9.2 rebounds and 6.3 assists at home. All three dip a bit on the road.

And just to cover all three members of Golden State's trio, for Jimmy Butler's career, his home playoff box plus/minus and average game score are both higher than his marks on the road.

In other words, it's safe to expect better performances from one, two or maybe even all three of these Warriors in Game 6.

And that could spell doom for the Rockets.

The Rockets looked like a full-fledged offensive juggernaut on Wednesday. They went 13-of-30 from three and dropped 131 points. But that's far from a typical output for this team.

Houston was 12th in the league in points per 100 possessions in the regular season. Prior to Wednesday's game, the Rockets were 11th in this postseason in three-point percentage.

With the pressure of another elimination game, this time on the road, bearing down on them, the Rockets are likely to naturally cool off a bit.

Add some more inspired defense from the Warriors, who were just humbled by the Game 5 loss, and Friday should go better for them.

Curry went 4-of-12 from the field for 13 points in Game 5. And while that's certainly an outlier, sub-20-point performances weren't super rare for him in 2024-25.

In the regular season, he failed to reach that threshold in 21 different games. He was below 15 points 13 times.

It's what he did in the 21 games that immediately followed those off nights that's interesting. In those contests, Curry averaged 28.5 points while shooting 46.0 percent from three. In two of those outings, he topped 50 points.

If that trend continues, we could be in for a big night for the Warriors' superstar. And when he has those, his team is tough to beat.

The Rockets are surely getting more comfortable with playoff basketball as we get deeper into this series, but the fact remains: Alperen Şengün, Jalen Green and Amen Thompson had zero postseason minutes between them prior to these ones.

Curry and Green have four championships apiece. Steve Kerr coached all four of those teams. Jimmy Butler took the Miami Heat to two different Finals they weren't supposed to reach.

And that big of a difference in experience level matters.

The most important players on the Warriors have faced dozens of elimination and closeout games. They've played hundreds of high-leverage playoff minutes. It would be hard to surprise them with anything.

And given the fact that they have two more chances to end this, one of which is at home, the Warriors are still in good shape.

Back in 2022, on the way to their fourth championship together, Draymond and Curry faced a young Memphis Grizzlies squad in the second round that was similarly precocious to these Rockets.

The Warriors had a chance to end that series on the road in Game 5, and they got walloped by 39 points. The Grizzlies' game ops crew famously played "Whoop that Trick" on the way out, and the team looked abundantly confident heading into Game 6.

That series shifted back to the bay, where the battle-tested Warriors won by double-digits.

Golden State doesn't just have the experience edge. Curry, Green and Kerr have been in this very situation before. And that should have them feeling pretty good heading into Friday's matchup.