Warriors vs. Rockets Preview: Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and lace up the sneakers

The Warriors had an ugly game on Friday, but there’s no time to dwell on it.

Hey, are you all stoked for some Golden State Warriors basketball? Isn’t that exactly what you’ve been waiting for? To finally get to the weekend and relax with some stress-free, fun, totally not in any way frustrating or infuriating Warriors ball?

I thought so!

The deets

Who: Golden State Warriors (24-28) vs. Houston Rockets (14-38)

When: 7:00 p.m. PT

Where: Chase Center, San Francisco, California

TV: NBC Sports Bay Area (available through fuboTV)

Projected starting lineups:

Warriors: Stephen Curry, Kelly Oubre Jr., Andrew Wiggins, Draymond Green, James Wiseman
Rockets: Avery Bradley, Kevin Porter Jr., Jae’Sean Tate, Kelly Olynyk, Christian Wood

Last results:

Warriors: Lost to the Wizards 110-107 — 1-4 in their last 5 games
Rockets: Lost to the Clippers 126-109 — 1-4 in their last 5 games

The story

Time and time again I’ve used this portion of the preview to talk about how the Warriors need to starting finding ways to win games against bad teams. I’m a little past talking about that.

Now the question has moved onto this: can the Warriors keep their chin up? They keep suffering bad loss after bad loss. They keep showing up with disappointing performance after disappointing performance. They keep falling further down the standings, coming eye to eye with teams that don’t have Steph Curry and recently hung banners.

Can they find confidence? Can they be motivated rather than deflated?

That, to me, is the story, not just for this game but for the rest of season. Chin up. Sneakers laced. Back to work.

Players to watch

Warrior to watch: Steph Curry.

I have zero confidence in the Warriors right now, so might as well watch the best player in franchise history, and the most entertaining basketball player on the planet.

If all else fails, at least we have that constant.

Rocket to watch; Kevin Porter Jr.

When the Warriors last faced the Rockets, Porter had just joined the team. Now he’s played 15 games for Houston, and the 20 year old is averaging 15.4 points and 6.3 assists per game.

He has the issues with defense and efficiency that you expect out of a player with less than a full season’s worth of NBA games under his belt, but my goodness is he fun and electric.

Matchup to watch: James Wiseman vs. Christian Wood.

Wiseman, still so young and raw, is the Warriors biggest question mark on any given night. Wood is the Rockets best player, by a mile or seven. The Dubs rookie is going to have his hands full on both ends of the court, but it certainly presents an opportunity.

Keys to victory

• Don’t have a flukey Steph Curry injury like last time these teams played
• Don’t wait until the second half to show up
• Quality minutes from the bench
• Threes. Lots of them.

Sigh. Win?