Rockets’ Disastrous Year Reaches Inevitable End with Plenty of Questions Ahead

OAKLAND, Calif. — When the Golden State Warriors eliminated the Houston Rockets in last year’s Western Conference Finals, there was every reason to be optimistic about the future of James Harden and his team.

Houston had nearly reached the NBA Finals, falling to the eventual champs, after getting only a half-season from Dwight Howard and suffering other significant injuries up and down the roster. Harden had just finished second in the MVP voting, and Ty Lawson would come aboard for next to nothing in the offseason, further bolstering the roster and contributing to hopes of another step forward.

The Rockets’ future was rosy.

After a 114-81 thrashing at the hands of the Warriors on Wednesday, it’s safe to say there’s no such positive sentiment after this year’s elimination.

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The Warriors’ best player wore a suit on the sidelines, and the Rockets looked less like a team hoping to capitalize and more like one ready to go home.

Houston let Klay Thompson loose early and often, couldn’t slow down Shaun Livingston, turned the ball over 17 times and allowed far too many transition opportunities for a Warriors offense that, in theory, needed breakaways to score without Stephen Curry in the lineup.

One first-quarter pass from Harden, who scored 18 of Houston’s 20 points in the opening period and was responsible for all of its field goals, bounced off Michael Beasley’s hands and hit Jason Terry in the chest before caroming out of bounds. This was not a good look for a player who guaranteed victory before the game.

In fact, the entire opening quarter was a bad look for the Rockets. It was not, however, an unfamiliar one.

Houston played like this all year.

“To me, this isn’t about one game,” head coach J.B. Bickerstaff said. “To me, this is about the opportunity that we’ve had the entire year. We forced it to come down to this game. We forced it to come down to us being the eighth seed.”

In addition to Harden providing all of the offense while others stood and watched, the Rockets turned the ball over four times and registered only three assists in a first quarter that decided the game. Down 37-20 after a truly disheartening 12 minutes, Houston must have thought it was trapped in a time loop.

The first quarter looked alarmingly like the pivotal third quarter of Game 4, when Golden State rallied without Curry to blitz the Rockets. That was a 41-20 margin, so…progress?

Everything that went wrong for Houston in Wednesday’s game and in the series as a whole was symptomatic of a team that simply never …

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