Lin didn’t do a particularly good job his first time under the hood, alas. In his first playoff game Monday night at Oklahoma City, he was outplayed in every fashion by Russell Westbrook in the Thunder’s 120-91 victory over the Rockets in Game 1 of their Western Conference series.
But with some reflection and film study behind him, back in Houston for the first of back-to-back practice sessions at Toyota Center before Wednesday’s Game 2, Lin sounded as if he had put Game 1 behind him.
“I had a bad game. That happens,” he said. “It will get better.”
The Rockets, he said, “have been blown out before. But we’ve also blown other teams out. A loss is a loss. We’re down 1-0. We don’t feel there’s stuff that they did that was just, ‘Oh, man, we can’t make a series out of this.’ That’s not the case.”
McHale for the second day in a row went to his favorite analogy of the moment, which is that the difference in performance between playoff rookies and playoff veterans is like the difference in taking your car to a guy who has read about fixing transmissions and a guy who has actual repair experience.
“We’re reading manuals about (playoff pressure),” McHale said. “Those (Oklahoma City) guys, those guys have done it. Relax. Go play. You’ve gotta experience it.
“One good thing about Jeremy is that he’s a tough kid. He’s always bounced back. I assume he’ll play really well (in Game 2).”
Lin was reluctant to acknowledge that the glaring contrast between his night (four points, four assists, three rebounds) and Westbrook’s (19 points, eight rebounds, 10 assists) was inevitable.
“A couple of shots go down, and the whole thing is different,” he said. “A couple less turnovers, and it’s a solid game. I’m not too worried about it.”
The Rockets’ collective mantra is that stopping Westbrook and Kevin Durant is a team duty and that it will take more than just Lin or Patrick Beverley on Westbrook or Chandler Parsons on Durant to get the job done.
“Defense has to be five guys,” said James Harden, who had 20 points in his first playoff game against his old team. “He’s (Westbrook) so talented and so athletic and explosive that it has to be five guys to control the paint and locked the paint. It can’t be one guy.”
So while Lin and Beverley are locked up with Westbrook, Rockets forward Chandler Parsons said the rest of the Rockets “have to build a wall (around Westbrook). He’s so athletic and he’s so fast in transition that you have to make sure you have numbers when you get back.
“It’s not just one guy, Pat or Jeremy, guarding him – it’s got to be everybody collectively. He’s a charge guy, so we’ve got to really put our body into plays.
Defensive woes aside, Lin struggled throughout, hitting just one of seven shots and misfiring on all four 3-point attempts, and his playoff experience was particularly evident in the final minutes of the second quarter.
The Rockets pulled even midway through the quarter at 40-40, but Serge Ibaka’s inside play on both ends of the court gave the Thunder the lead, and Lin had two turnovers in the final 1:40 as Oklahoma City built its lead to 13 at the break.
“You’ve gotta take care of the ball,” Lin said. “That’s not new to us. It’s the same in every game. It’s just now that it’s the playoffs and it’s a little more magnified.”
Houston’s success, he said, is based on “taking are of the ball and getting back in transition, but a lot of getting back in transition has to do with taking care of the ball.”
The Rockets are back at it Tuesday with a midday practice at their downtown practice court before flying to Oklahoma City in advance of Wednesday night’s game. Tuesday’s message, Lin said, is likely to be the same as Monday’s when it comes to the Rockets’ must-do list for Game 2.
“Being aggressive, getting to the corner, running, playing good defense, game rebounding, sharing the ball, hitting the open man,” he said. “Things that are easy to say on the outside and kinda hard to do when you play a team that is more athletic or a team that switches pick and rolls or a team that ha the length that they have.”
Lin’s solace for Game 1, he said, is that “every game is different. Every game is a different rhythm, a different animal. Every game has a different personality. Hopefully the next game will be a lot different.”
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