Rockets knew what was coming from Steph Curry and couldn't stop him or Warriors

Elizabeth Conley/Houston Chronicle

SAN FRANCISCO — Houston Rockets point guard Fred VanVleet started the possession hugging Stephen Curry in the paint and ended it watching Curry nail a 3-pointer over Rockets guard Jalen Green with five seconds remaining on the shot clock.

Curry’s shot — his last field goal of the night — gave the Golden State Warriors a nine-point lead with three minutes remaining in Saturday’s playoff game against the Rockets, whose players and fans are all too familiar with his work.

Curry’s nickname is the Baby-Faced Assassin. Assassination implies an ambush, an attack that no one saw coming.

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The Rockets could see this one coming from a mile away. They still couldn’t stop it.

While his injured Warriors teammate Jimmy Butler III sat on the bench in a fur coat, Curry erupted for 36 points on 12-of-23 shooting and the Rockets let a golden opportunity to take a series lead over the Warriors slip away in a Game 3 loss on Saturday.

Myriad culprits contributed to the Rockets’ demise. Houston missed 10 free throws in a game it lost by 11 points and got 24 points combined on 11-of-29 shooting from leading scorers Jalen Green and Alperen Şengün. Golden State had five fewer offensive rebounds but scored seven more second-chance points.

Curry, though, resumed the torturer role he has played many times over the years against the Rockets — a playoff villain who somehow always reaches the peak of his powers at Houston’s expense.

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“I mean, we’re not gonna hold him to three points every time we play him. I think we got to understand that,” VanVleet said. “He’s one of the all-time greats. Our coverages were a little slow tonight. Some of the switching, some of the physicality was just a touch down from how we had it ramped up the previous game. But, you know, this is the playoffs and games are all about adjustments and chess matching, different things. So they were prepared, thought they executed at a higher level than we did. And sometimes, you know, that’s all it comes down to. So he got some clean looks more than we would like so we got to try and limit his opportunities and make his life a little bit harder out there but obviously, that’s a tough cover.”

Curry scored 31 points to lead the Warriors to victory in Game 1. After Butler was injured early in Game 2, the Rockets keyed in on Curry and forced him to commit six turnovers; the Warriors were outscored by three points during Curry’s minutes in Houston’s Game 2 win.

With Butler still sidelined in Game 3, the Rockets blitzed Curry on pick-and-rolls, trapped him and tried everything to get the ball out of his hands. When they succeeded in doing that, Buddy Hield and Gary Payton II hit big shots for the Warriors. Those two combined to score 33 points off the bench, with Hield supplying five 3-pointers.

“We go after (Curry) quite a bit and make the others have to beat us,” Rockets coach Ime Udoka said. “When they have certain lineups out there it’s favorable to force it to the other guys and make them beat us. Payton hit a big one tonight when they were up one, and that’s a gamble we’re going to take at times. But something we have done quite a bit is gone after him, and it’s obviously worked out well enough, and they hadn’t scored over a hundred in two games.”

Curry took only four shots in the first quarter and made one. He said he could tell that the Rockets were trying to take him out of the game and made it a point to be more assertive after that, scoring 13 points on seven shots in the second quarter as the Warriors whittled Houston’s 13-point lead down to three points at halftime.

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“Didn’t seem like there was a lot of flow so I did kind of force the issue a little bit in the second quarter and got going, thankfully hit some shots,” Curry said. “You can’t just go crazy the whole game, playing 41 minutes. You have to understand the flow and when to look for your shot when you get the ball out of the trap and let things happen on the back end.”

Amen Thompson was the Rockets’ Curry shutdown switch in the regular season, with Thompson helping to hold Curry to a 1-of-10 shooting night in the final meeting at Chase Center on April 6.

On Saturday, Thompson said the Rockets were sometimes a step behind on their coverages and Curry made them pay.

“He hit some tough shots, obviously. It’s Steph,” Thompson said. “He’s still gonna play. He got to score for them to win. He’s got to be the best player for them to win and I think we see that. So just try to shut him out.”

Curry is a master of moving without the ball, a magician who can vanish from one spot on the court only to pop up in another spot in time to receive a pass for a shot. As part of his 12-point third quarter, he drilled a couple of timely relocation 3s after the Rockets initially forced him to give the ball up in traps.

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Green said that the Rockets lacked proper communication on rotations when Curry passed out of double teams.

“Our rotations was just pretty poor today,” Green said. “We got to be better at rotations. We know what to do. We’ve done it before. We’ve just got to get back to that.”

Even with Curry’s outburst, the Rockets held the Warriors under 100 points until the last 21 seconds of the game, when a VanVleet turnover led to a Payton dunk and turned a two-possession game into a three-possession game.

But the Rockets were outscored in paint points, second-chance points and fast-break points — the formula they typically use to win games.

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They’ll have another chance to adjust in Game 4 on Monday in San Francisco, which will be the ninth time Houston and Golden State face each other this season. But just because the Rockets know what Curry and the Warriors will throw at them, doesn’t make it easier to handle.

“I think styles make fights and I think that’s true for basketball, especially,” VanVleet said. “And the teams and the way that we guard and the way that they run their offense and the way that they guard and the way we run our offense, just makes for tough on both ends. It’s nasty out there as you can see. There’s no love lost. Attention to detail’s got to be at an all-time high. Can’t lose focus, can’t take plays off.”

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Rockets knew what was coming from Steph Curry and couldn’t stop him or Warriors

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