The Rockets are very good. They’ve got an insane wealth of shooting; they’ve got a deep supply of versatile wings; they’ve got more than enough off-the-bounce shot-creating; they’ve got strong, useful pick-and-roll bigs; they’ve got two of the, oh, six or seven best players in the entire Western Conference. They just beat the Warriors for the second time this season, and they are undefeated when all of James Harden, Chris Paul, and Clint Capela play.
You can imagine, they are feeling quite good about themselves right now. Justifiably! Still, you might enjoy this moment in Tim McMahon’s post-game report, when Capela—fresh off a genuinely excellent 18-point, four-steal performance—talked about Houston’s potential for greatness, and then kept talking, and then suddenly the point where he should’ve stopped talking was behind him, forever:
“We’re confident because we know if we’re doing what we’re supposed to do, we’re going to beat them,” Rockets center Clint Capela told ESPN. “We’ve got to keep playing. We know that they’re going to come back if we have the lead, and we’ve just got to keep that mindset. Sometimes I feel like, in the past, we were all dragging down after mistakes. But today, we were ready. I think that if we’re doing what we’re supposed to do on defense — all the switches, the weak side — and keep playing our offense by keeping that mentality all game long, we have the weapons to beat them.
“We are better than them.”
Clint. Clint!