Dwight Howard has no plans to call it a season just yet.
Following a Game 4 loss to the Golden State Warriors, the Houston Rockets are now on the brink, trailing the best regular season team in NBA history 3-1, a grave from which very few squads have ever escaped. But Howard doesn’t care. He already has Game 5 penciled in as a win for Houston, per CBS Sports’ Ananth Pandian:
“Game 5 won’t be the last game for us.” Said Howard. “We’re going to try and win.”
“But if we don’t go in with the mindset we’re going to win the game, why should we play? Our lives are on the line, let’s go out there and play.”
This is Dwight, essentially guaranteeing a win, without actually guaranteeing a win.
There really isn’t anything else he can do. He isn’t going to declare the Rockets, his own team for the time being, dead in the water.
At the same time, Houston has given very little indication that it can hang with Golden State, even when Stephen Curry is on the sidelines. The Rockets barely escaped Game 3 with a win, and the Warriors, though without Curry, now return home, to Oracle Arena, with a chance to end this series and live to fight another round, most likely without Steph. That doesn’t seem like an opportunity they’re prepared to squander.
More importantly, it doesn’t seem like an opportunity the Rockets are fit to derail.
