LOS ANGELES: The Golden State Warriors punched their ticket to the second round of the NBA playoffs on Sunday, shaking off two straight defeats to grab a 103-89 Game 7 victory over the Houston Rockets.
The Warriors were the last team to advance to the conference semifinals, which got under way earlier Sunday with the Indiana Pacers handing the Eastern Conference top seeds Cleveland a 121-112 defeat on their home floor.
On a Warriors team stacked with post-season experience, Buddy Hield — playing in his 11th playoff game — drilled nine three-pointers on 11 attempts on the way to a game-high 33 points.
Stephen Curry scored 14 of his 22 points in the fourth quarter as the Warriors finally frustrated the second-seeded Rockets, who were coming off two dominant victories and had visions of becoming just the 14th team to rally from 3-1 down to win an NBA playoff series.
“A lot of resilience,” Curry said. “Everybody stepping up. Everybody’s been talking about our team the last two games in terms of our execution, our energy, all that.
“We blocked it all out and just understood we had 48 minutes to dig deep. Everybody contributed.
“Buddy Hield was unbelievable,” added Curry after the Warriors lined up a second-round clash with the Minnesota Timberwolves, who ousted LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers in five games.
Curry’s first basket was a three-pointer with 33.3sec left in the first half.
But Hield was on fire, making six three-pointers on the way to 22 first-half points and Draymond Green added 10 points to help the Warriors to a 51-39 halftime lead.
They pushed the lead to as many as 15 before the Rockets battled back, cutting their deficit to three.
Amen Thompson scored 24 points and grabbed nine rebounds and
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