The Houston Rockets were able to beat the Golden State Warriors on Monday night to keep their playoff hopes alive and they returned to their locker room to find an amusing little memento.
Every Rockets player found a leaked Warriors press memo in their locker that stated what the Warriors’ plans were going to be following a “4-0 series sweep of the Houston Rockets in the Western Conference Finals.”
While the memo wasn’t distributed by the Warriors (obviously), the team did confirm that the memo was real according to Calvin Watkins of ESPN:
The memo wasn’t distributed to the media, but its legitimacy was confirmed by Raymond Ridder, the Warriors’ vice president for communication.
To Houston’s credit, the team didn’t seem to take the memo too seriously. While some players “smiled and shook their heads” at the small bit of Warriors-related hubris, Josh Smith disregarded any notion that this letter will become any sort of rallying cry for the Rockets.
“They’re confident in their team,” said Josh Smith, who scored 20 points Monday night. “It’s not added motivation; we just got to go out there and play. I don’t really feed into the whole mentally get your rah-rah hype. I just want to go out and play my game.”
And to be fair to the Warriors, their media team likely had to have such a memo prepared just in case the Warriors did win on Monday night. However, one can’t fault the Rockets for relishing their elimination-saving win as much as possible after Game 4.
