HOUSTON -- Day after day, from opening night in Oakland onward, the anticipation raged on, a fire building toward an inferno. The Golden State Warriors and Houston Rockets, the defending champion and its most legitimate threat -- a tantalizing matchup featuring enough star wattage to power a city. Their collision seemed fated, inevitable, a playoff series that would define the postseason.
After so many months, the title contenders delivered a performance worthy of even the most outsized expectations Monday night at a pulsing Toyota Center packed with leather-lunged fans yelling themselves hoarse and in-house music that thumped like a Las Vegas nightclub.