Golden State Warriors: Top 5 toughest matchups for the 2019-2020 season

#5: Houston Rockets

General Manager Daryl Morey has made it a personal mission to do whatever it takes to finally overcome the Golden State Warriors.

It doesn’t matter to him that this team is different than the ones that have ended his team’s championship dreams the last couple of seasons. If the Houston Rockets are able to vanquish the Warriors in a playoff series, he will finally find peace.

While it appeared that this offseason was set up to be a disastrous one for the Rockets between the speculation that there was beef between Chris Paul and James Harden along with a fallout with head coach Mike D’Antoni over contract talks, things took a sharp turn for the better.

Russell Westbrook is now a Houston Rocket.

The Oklahoma City Thunder decided, finally, that they couldn’t keep leaning on Westbrook, so they struck a deal with the insufferable Daryl Morey and shipped him off to re-form a tandem with James Harden.

This immediately rocketed Houston up in championship consideration for this coming season. Westbrook, at first glance, is a massive upgrade over Paul, right?

Well, maybe not.

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It’s still unclear if Westbrook can fit into the Rockets scheme at all or if he’ll serve as a massive detriment to a team that already has some issue with direction. The advanced metrics show that Westbrook might be a big downgrade.

When considering how the Golden State Warriors matchup against this new Rockets team, the backcourt matchup is the first thing to highlight.

Though Paul is an aging guard, he could at least play some pretty consistent defense that would at least make Stephen Curry somewhat uncomfortable. That might still be a possibility with the peskiness of Austin Rivers, but Westbrook will not bring that defensive consistency.

Westbrook plays both offense and defense the same way — recklessly overexerting himself on some plays and taking others off. When it works, it translates to buckets and steals, but when it doesn’t, it turns into wild shots and wide-open looks for the players he’s meant to defend.

The Rockets’ biggest weakness this next season will be concerns about floor-spacing with Westbrook. Coach Kerr will almost undoubtedly let Westbrook try his hand at long-range shots.

It’s still hard to imagine a Rockets offense that will allow Westbrook — or anyone — to utilize a midrange game, too.

With the Warriors’ defense being limited in the first part of the season by the absence of Klay Thompson, it’ll be a huge lift to not have to worry about two capable scoring guards.

The Rockets have a laundry list of things to figure out before they have to worry about any playoff series. They’ll be bringing back a capable cast that should bolster a pretty solid bench, but the biggest factor in their success will be the coexistence of Harden and Westbrook.

Will the two be able to coexist? Will it be a matter of sequencing their minutes on the floor and hoping to divert any crunch-time decision of who to give the ball to? Only time will tell.

But when the Golden State Warriors are fully healthy by the end of the year, they shouldn’t be worried about what the Houston Rockets bring to the table. It’s still two guards who can’t seem to get their team over the hump.

And if it stays that way, the Rockets could end up getting bounced by the Warriors in the playoffs for the fifth time in six seasons.