The Golden State Warriors have done their job, defending home court to take a 2-0 series lead.
In Game 2, it was a balanced scoring effort from Kevin Durant (29 points), Stephen Curry (20 points) and Klay Thompson (21 points) to lead the Warriors to victory.
James Harden battled through a nagging eye injury throughout the entire game, still finishing with 29 points. Solid contributions from the rest of the Rockets' starting unit and Austin Rivers off the bench kept this game close, but the Warriors closed out on defence down the stretch to put the game away.
For more Golden State's win to defend home court, we have you covered with takeaways below...
Superstar's annoying injuries
Game 2 got off to an odd start for both teams.
Three and a half minutes in the game, Stephen Curry jammed his finger and had to leave the game. The Warriors would diagnose it as a dislocated middle finger, but Curry would return to the game shortly after he exited the game anyway.
Moments after Curry's finger injury, James Harden was poked in the eye and had to leave the contest. He was bleeding from his eye and had trouble seeing and was forced to head back to the locker room.
The Rockets would diagnose Harden with a lacerated left eyelid, but he would also return to the game midway through the second quarter.
Both superstars knew how badly their teams needed them, battling through peculiar injuries.
Curry would end up working around foul trouble again in the second half but would finish playing 33 minutes, scoring 20 points on an off shooting night going 3-for-13 from beyond the arc. He made up for his shooting by filling up the rest of the stat sheet with five assists, three rebounds, two steals and a block.
As for Harden, he could barely see the entire contest and still found a way to get buckets. He finished with 29 points, seven rebounds, four assists and a steal in 35 minutes of playing time, doing everything he could to fight through the pain and try and even the series.
Draymond stepping up
Draymond Green's final box score doesn't always tell the story of what he brought to his team.
He was great in defending the pick-and-roll, played fantastically as a help defender, worked the ball around in the Warriors' offence and made an impact on the offensive glass, too.
His stat line of 15 points, 12 rebounds (five offensive), seven assists, two steals in the Warriors' Game 2 win does some sort of justice to how well Green played, but he still does so much that doesn't show up in a box score.
Draymond has been instrumental in Golden State's playoff run thus far. He's flirting with a triple-double every night, anchors their defence and plays a key role in making sure the ball doesn't stick to any one particular star on the offensive end.
The Warriors have elected to go small in this series with the injury to DeMarcus Cousins, starting Andre Iguodala as opposed to one of their backup centres, and this strategy could only work if Green stepped up to the challenge.
With his team leading 2-0 in the series he's knocked that challenge out of the park, but it's vital to his team's success that he continues to compete at this level for the remainder of the series.
Warriors' score plenty on Rockets' turnovers
The Warriors have 14 more field goal attempts than the Rockets and those extra shots are coming from different aspects of the game.
The hosts have beat the visitors 18-10 on the offensive glass while scoring 24 points off the Rockets' 18 turnovers.
Not only were the champs getting more shot attempts but they were also getting those attempts to fall at an almost similar efficiency to that of the Rockets.
Golden State shot 42-91 (46.2%) from the field beating the Rockets' efficiency of 46.8% (36-of-77), overcoming the visitors' 17 3-pointers.
Bounce-back games for Rockets' supporting cast
In Game 1, the trio of Harden, Gordon and Paul had 79 of the team's 100 points. The supporting cast trio of Clint Capela, PJ Tucker (3 rebounds) and Austin Rivers only combined for 2 points.
However, in Game 2, with Harden missing the much of the first half, the trio came up huge, combining for 41 points.
Capela had a double-double in of 14 points and 10 rebounds in 33 minutes of action. Tucker recorded a double-double as well with 13 points and 10 rebound. Rivers, meanwhile, went from playing zero minutes in Game 1 to contributing 14 (11 in the first half) on 4-of-7 shooting.