Perhaps this can all be explained away like this: the Rockets got within one victory of playing for the championship and only didn’t because they did not have Chris Paul and lost to a historically special team that had an offensive DNA quite similar to Houston’s.
But it was hard to ignore that what the Rockets do to the extreme, shoot 3-pointers – more than any other team ever and it is not even close – undermined them in their most important game. At one point in losing Western Conference Final Game 7 to Golden State, Houston missed 27 consecutive threes and made just seven of 44 in all.