They boat raced the Houston Rockets in the first half on Saturday night, using red-hot shooting, suffocating defense and far superior chemistry and cohesion to take a seemingly insurmountable 28-point lead into intermission. The dogged two-way efforts of Tari Eason and Amen Thompson spearheaded Houston’s unlikely comeback, but so did Golden State clanking a whopping 18 free throws and going a full six minutes without a field goal between the late third and early fourth quarters, completely bogged down by the Rockets’ switch-everything defense.
Suddenly trailing in crunch-time, the shorthanded Dubs even put themselves back in position for what seemed like a surefire victory late. They were up two with 8.3 seconds left when Draymond Green airmailed an inbounds pass to Andrew Wiggins, then inexplicably fouled Eason on a drive—not just automatically sending Houston’s live-wire forward to the free throw line to tie the game, but automatically sending himself to the bench for good with a disqualifying sixth foul.
The Rockets didn’t give Golden State much of a chance to squander a lead in overtime, missing their first five shots while falling behind multiple possessions. Still, it took a similarly eye-opening sequence of individual scoring chops from Kuminga in the extra session that Podziemski displayed over the last few minutes of the fourth quarter for Golden State to escape H-Town with an absolutely wild 127-121 victory.
“I was so proud of the guys for the way they responded to what was an onslaught from Houston that second half, and especially fourth quarter,” Steve Kerr said on the postgame podium. “Great experience. To win after Draymond fouls out, to win without Steph, to win on a night when a game just completely flipped.
“It’s great to have that game on tape, it’s great to feel it,” he continued, “because we’re gonna have to get better when we face that kind of defense.”
Brandin Podziemski, Jonathan Kuminga will Warriors to victory
Houston was overwhelmed early by the Dubs’ all-around pace and continuity of movement in both the halfcourt and transition. Ime Udoka solved that rippling problem by benching his team’s foremost cornerstones, leaving Alperen Sengun on the bench for the entirety of the fourth quarter and overtime while sitting Jalen Green next to him for the majority of those 17 minutes.
The Rockets are stocked with aggressive, versatile, disruptive defenders. That description doesn’t apply to Sengun or Green, goading Houston into confused rotations amid the Warriors’ incessant churn of movement and screening both on and off the ball. The surest means of avoiding those mistakes? Deploying lineups that capably switch across five positions, nullifying the need f0r much connectivity and communication at all defensively.
Curry’s absence only made that decision easier for Udoka. What Houston couldn’t have counted on, though, is Podziemski making hay in those forced one-on-one opportunities when Golden State needed points most.
“Brandin made some huge shots down the stretch of regulation,” Kerr said. “We should’ve put it away at that point.”
Three of Podziemski’s five made field goals came as the Warriors and Rockets traded leads in the last few minutes of regulation. Using craft, footwork and strength to go through Jalen Green for an isolation bucket is one thing.
Utilizing that same approach to score on a defender of Thompson’s caliber then going one-on-one at the top of the floor for a turnaround over Jabari Smith Jr. is much, much different—hints of the utmost potential that have Joe Lacob and other team power brokers predicting stardom for Podziemski.
“I’m slow myself, so I never try to get sped up. But the one thing my people back home have just been stressing to me is when they speed up you slow down, and when they try to slow you down you speed up,” Podziemski said of his scoring binge after the game. “So just kinda took that into consideration, and I know they were all amped because they were on a run so they’re trying to be extra aggressive, and when they get extra aggressive you just slow down and play at your pace. I think guys like Luka, even Steph, do a really good job of that. So for me, not having Steph out there and being the floor general, that was just my mindset.”
Kuminga, meanwhile, tapped into his own singular identity as a scorer after the final buzzer of regulation.
“We needed JK’s ability to beat the switches and get downhill, and he just took over,” Kerr said. “He was fantastic.”
It still stands to reason that Podziemski and Kuminga mean more for this team’s long-term future than immediate present. A post-Curry life is coming for the Warriors, and they clearly hold both young players in high esteem after refusing to make them readily available in trade talks for Paul George and Lauri Markkanen over the summer. Podziemski and Kuminga’s best basketball is years ahead of them, not months.
But it’s clear Golden State’s prized tandem has settled in after uneven starts to 2024-25, begging the question of just how good Podziemski and Kuminga can be across the 82-game grind and into the playoffs.
