Houston Rockets: 3-1 Deficit Not Insurmountable, Just Almost

Pick any cliché you like: Behind the 8-ball, backs against the wall, between a rock and a hard place, pushed to the brink, or what have you.

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If you look in any of those locations, you’ll see the red, white and possibly gold of the Houston Rockets.

The Rockets completed the first step of coming back from a 3-1 postseason deficit on Tuesday night when they hammered the Los Angeles Clippers at the Toyota Center, 124-103.

In the process, Houston already made a little history, becoming the first team in NBA history to win a game by at least 20 points in the same series in which they’d lost two straight games by the same margin.

But the road ahead is daunting. Only eight teams have come back from 3-1 deficits to win a best-of-7 series in the NBA Playoffs.

The good news for Houston—the silver lining, if you will—is that six of those eight got to play Game 7 on their home court.

The bad news for Houston—road teams in Game 6, after trailing 3-1 in a series, are 13-45.

And while road teams are 24-95 overall in Game 7s, road teams that had a 3-1 lead and were pushed to a seventh game are 7-6 in those Game 7s.

There hasn’t been a team come back from a 3-1 deficit to win a series since the Phoenix Suns did it to the Los Angeles Lakers in the first round in 2006.

There have been three teams since then that fell behind 3-1, forced the series to a seventh game at home … and lost.

Those would be the San Antonio Spurs, who lost Game 7 at home to the Dallas Mavericks in the 2006 Western Conference semifinals; the Memphis Grizzlies, losers of a Game 7 at the Grindhouse to the Los Angeles Clippers in the first round in 2012; and the Brooklyn Nets, who dropped Game 7 at the Barclays Center to the Chicago Bulls in the 2013 first round.

But 45 teams that forced a Game 6 on the road when trailing 3-1 went on to lose the next game, most recently the Indiana Pacers in Miami in last year’s Eastern Conference Finals.

The Clippers are saying the right things about having a sense of urgency for Game 6.

“You look at, statistically, Game 7s on the road,” Blake Griffin told ESPN Los Angeles. “Nobody wants to put themselves in that position. If we don’t have a sense of urgency going home after already losing a game, then we’ll be in trouble. But we’ll be all right.”

The Clippers, since Chris Paul joined the team in 2011, have never won a series in fewer than seven games. They needed the maximum to eliminate the Grizzlies in 2012—having to go on the road to do it after losing Games 5 and 6 after taking a 3-1 lead. They were pushed to seven games by the Golden State Warriors last year in the first round.

And, they had to erase a 3-2 deficit to beat the San Antonio Spurs in the first round this year, including winning Game 6 on the road against the defending champions.

With Tuesday’s loss, the Clippers are now 0-4 in early closeout games since Paul joined the team.

The Rockets, meanwhile, have in their history one glimmer of hope to cling to: They are one of the elite eight to erase a 3-1 deficit to win a series, bouncing the Phoenix Suns in the conference semifinals in 1995 en route to their second straight NBA title.

And those Rockets had to do it the hard way, winning Games 5 and 7 on the road.

But what of those eight teams once they fought back to advance?

The 1968 Boston Celtics were the first to accomplish the feat, storming back to knock off the defending champion Philadelphia 76ers in a Game 7 on the road after trailing 3-1, and they went on to win the NBA title.

The 1970 Los Angeles Lakers had to come from behind to beat the Suns in the Western Division semifinals in 1970 and reached the NBA Finals, where they lost Game 7 to the New York Knicks, who had authored their own come back in the division semifinals in the East that year, roaring back to eliminate the Baltimore Bullets after trailing 3-1.

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The 1979 Washington Bullets came back to take out the Spurs in the Eastern Conference Finals, but were spent at that point, losing the NBA Finals in five games to the Seattle SuperSonics.

The Celtics pulled off another 3-1 comeback against the 76ers in the 1981 Eastern Conference Finals before going on to beat the Rockets in six games for the title.

In 1997, the Miami Heat came back to beat the Knicks in seven games after being behind 3-1, but were trounced in five games in the Chicago Bulls in the Eastern Conference Finals the next round.

In 2003, the Detroit Pistons completed one of the most infamous 3-1 comebacks, beating the Orlando Magic in the first round after Magic star Tracy McGrady counted his chickens before they hatched, telling reporters after the Game 4 win in Orlando, “It feels good to get in the second round.”

It ended up like this:

For the Houston Rockets, they can only look to the failure of McGrady—who was never able to advance past the first round in the three times he was in the postseason with the Rockets, either—as inspiration against a Los Angeles Clippers squad that is fighting its own dubious postseason history, having never reached the conference finals in their 45 seasons that included eight seasons in Buffalo and six in San Diego.

–All statistics and research via Basketball-Reference.com

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