Discount the regular season at your peril. Notice the two teams with the best regular season records (Golden State Warrior, Atlanta Hawks) are still playing? But as the Warriors take on the Houston Rockets, the decisive regular season edge (4-0) held by the Warriors is misleading. And that’s for two very simple reasons.
The Rockets — tied for the third best record during the regular season, btw — will likely start Josh Smith, Jason Terry, Trevor Ariza, Dwight Howard and James Harden against the Warriors, as they did in Game 7 against the Clippers. Of those Jason Terry and Josh Smith — 40 percent of the starting lineup — didn’t play in any of the four regular season losses against the Warriors.
