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The Houston Rockets did not want to head on to the road down 2-0 in their first-round matchup against the seventh-seeded Golden State Warriors. And this was evident in the play of Jalen Green, who shook off his Game 1 demons and popped off in their 109-94 victory in Game 2 to even up the series. Green was coming off a seven-point outing on 3-15 shooting from the field, but he showed that he has the memory of a goldfish, redeeming himself with a 38-point night on 13-25 shooting from the field (8-18 from beyond the arc).
Inefficiency and inconsistency has long been Green's Achilles heel, and it looked like the Rockets guard was getting deeper into the slump he ended the 2024-25 regular season with. But head coach Ime Udoka pulled Green aside and rallied him, resulting in arguably his best performance of the season considering stakes.
“The message is, man, keep it simple. It's just basketball. Once you get it out of the way, that first game, you do what you've been doing all year and your whole career,” Udoka said in his postgame presser, via NBA TV on X (formerly Twitter).
"Keep it simple, it's just basketball"
Ime Udoka on the message to Şengün & Green during their first #NBAPlayoffs 💯 pic.twitter.com/fAxQzVrIix
— NBA TV (@NBATV) April 24, 2025
Perhaps there were first game jitters for Green as Game 1 marked the first playoff game of his career after toiling away at the bottom of the Western Conference for the first few years of his career. But it's clear that when Green has it going, the Rockets are hard to stop, and it's not a stretch to say that they may not have won that game if it weren't for the 23-year-old guard.
The Rockets' weakness all season long has been their struggle to score out of the halfcourt. But if Green has it going the way he did on Wednesday night, then Houston will have a much easier path moving forward in terms of advancing deep into the playoffs.
Jalen Green busts out of slump in a huge way for the Rockets
Jalen Green made an effort to suit up in all 82 games for the Rockets, which is admirable in today's load management-driven era. But this may have taken away from the rhythm of his game; in the last three games of the regular season, he ended up averaging just 5.3 points in 17 minutes per game on 18.8 percent shooting from the field.
But from the start of Game 2, it was clear that Green had his mojo back. And as a result of his 38-point outburst, the Rockets have tied up the series and may be in a more favorable spot from here on out amid the Warriors' Jimmy Butler injury troubles.
