HOUSTON — If the Warriors want to win the franchise’s fifth championship of the Steph Curry era, they will have to do so without home-court advantage in their first-round series against Houston that starts Sunday and probably any other matchup along the way.
That is not the end of the world, according to Golden State coach Steve Kerr, who recently said that having home-court advantage does not provide the upper hand like it once did.
“The 3-point shooting is such a variable, and it feels like in the old days, it was much more of a grind-it-out, 2-point game,” Kerr said. “It just didn’t feel like the opponent had as much of a chance to suddenly get hot and take over the momentum of the game.”
The seventh-seeded Warriors (48-34) entered the postseason fourth in 3-point makes (15.4) per game, and the No. 2 seed Rockets (52-30) 21st at 12.7.
Having a roster filled with playoff-tested veterans such as Draymond Green and Jimmy Butler has also been touted by the team in recent weeks.
None of Golden State’s experienced core is going to be phased by raucous road atmospheres. Especially in Houston, where Curry, Green and veteran big man Kevon Looney faced the James Harden-led Rockets four times in five seasons between 2015 and 2019 – and won them all, including a seventh game in Houston.
“We understand the environment, even just being in the city, how to spend time during a two-game-in-five-day stretch,” said Curry, while noting that the rest of the team was not around for those playoff battles.
But are upsets, like the one Golden State seeks to pull off, really more prevalent in the modern NBA?
And how much does 3-point shooting really affect the outcome?
The numbers paint a complicated picture.
From 2005 to 2024, there have been 160 first-round playoff series. Of those, the lower seed has won 34 times.
But despite what Kerr said, upsets have not become more prevalent with the rapid increase in 3-point shooting.
Twenty of those upsets occurred before 2015, the season that Kerr took over the Warriors, Golden State won its first title in decades and the NBA’s 3-point revolution began in earnest.
While the team that made more 3-pointers accounted for 19 series wins, of the six most-recent upsets over the past two years, only two of those teams made more threes than its opponent.
Golden State was one of those two in 2023, when Curry went to Sacramento and scored 50 in Game 7 while making seven 3-pointers himself in the first-round upset.
The Warriors’ veteran experience, at least on paper, is also not an overwhelming advantage.
Though bench players might skew averages, the team with an older average age accounted for just 12 of the 34 upsets.
However, Golden State has good reason to believe it does not need home-court advantage to win against the young Rockets.
During the teams’ epic seven-game series in the 2018 conference finals, Houston was the top seed.
The Rockets proceeded to infamously brick 27 straight 3-pointers, while Kevin Durant scored a game-high 34, to propel Golden State to a 101-92 victory in Game 7 of the Western Conference finals.
And in 2022, the eventual champion Warriors earned the No. 3 seed and knocked off second-seeded Memphis in the second round.
Once they reached the championship round, Curry’s Warriors won twice in Boston – including the series clincher in Game 6 – to capture the franchise’s fifth title.
“It always helps to have home-court advantage, and that’s why we fight so hard for it,” Looney said. “But with our experience, we know we can win on the road, and we know we can win at home, so we’re not scared to go into somebody else’s place and try to get a win.”
The Warriors also have Butler, who twice (2020 and 2023) led Miami to first-round upsets en route to shocking runs to the NBA Finals.
And before Kerr arrived, Curry’s postseason coming-out party in 2013 occurred when he lit up the Nuggets to help the sixth-seeded Warriors win in six games, and the “We Believe” Warriors in 2007 captivated the NBA world by stunning the top-seeded Dallas Mavericks 4-2.
So while upsets have not become as common as long-distance shooting, there is still plenty of reason to believe the Warriors have a terrific shot at becoming just the third No. 7 seed to pull off a first-round upset in the past 20 years.