Throughout NBA history, there have been 290 instances of a team going down 3-1 in a playoff series, and only 13 times has that team come back to win. The Houston Rockets put themselves in position to become the 14th with a blowout Game 6 win over the Warriors on Friday, setting up the two best words in all of sports on Sunday night in Houston.

Game seven.

On the flip side, the Warriors know all too well about blowing a 3-1 lead, as they are one of the 13 teams to do so. Nobody needs any reminders about the 2016 Finals. Certainly not in Golden State. But this storyline will be front and center over these next two days as the Warriors are most definitely on the brink of having it happen again.

Their three wins notwithstanding, the Warriors have felt like the team playing uphill for the majority of this series. They’re being suffocated by Houston’s defense and killed on the offensive glass, and their desperate, if valiant, efforts to punch above their weight have caught up with them over the last two Rockets blowouts.

Not even Houston’s 23-point differential over Games 5 and 6 does adequate justice to how thoroughly Golden State has been dominated since going up 3-1. Houston’s defense, which has suddenly added another layer of destruction with the throwback rim protection of Steven Adams, shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. But a lot of people are probably surprised by this Rockets offense averaging 123 points over the last two games.

They shouldn’t be. Houston was nearly a top-10 offense this season, so let’s end this talk right now about scoring being some kind of debilitating weakness. Yes, they lack a go-to scorer in the most traditional or consistent sense, and if you don’t want to look any deeper than that, then yes, you’re going to be surprised when this team puts buckets on a team like Golden State, an elite defense in its own right.

The Rockets have plenty of shot-creators and shot-makers, and on any given night any one or two of them can get it going at an All-Star level. When they don’t, sure, the offense can look like a lost cause. But when they do? Combined with this defense, you have a serious problem on your hands.

Jalen Green won Game 2 for the Rockets with 38 points. Alperen Sengun had 31 in Game 4 and 21, to go along with 14 rebounds, six assists, and three steals in Game 6. Dillon Brooks had 24 in Game 5. Fred VanVleet, who had 29 with six 3s on Friday, has 80 points and 18 3-pointers over the last three games of this series. This four-point play from VanVleet to begin the fourth quarter, after the Warriors had cut the deficit to two, was a dagger.

FOUR-POINT PLAY FROM VANVLEET! 😳
(via @NBA) pic.twitter.com/iA4HG6ZmaV
— ESPN BET (@ESPNBET) May 3, 2025

“I thought the key play was the four-point play to start the [fourth] quarter,” Steve Kerr said. “That’s on us as a staff. We’ve got to make sure [our guys are] matched up. They just threw it, we didn’t guard VanVleet when he threw it up the floor, knocks it down, gets the free throw. Felt like a game-changing play.”