Volume Five: Unparalleled — Battle for the Top Spot
But no matter how easy the schedule was, victories would not fall from the sky. If the Warriors wanted to hold onto the top seed in the West, and Curry wanted to gain an edge in the MVP race, they had to win their final seven games and keep the initiative firmly in their own hands. That same day, the Rockets lost 113:118 to the Pacers at home on the second night of a back-to-back, allowing the Warriors to further extend their lead and lock up the Western Conference's top seed. In their final regular-season meeting with the Rockets, Zhang Yu ran an experiment, keeping Lopez on the court and trying out various defensive schemes, with the focus on how effectively Lopez could defend Harden and Paul. Kerr was not someone who only knew how to run cuts and screens, either. With three elite scorers at his disposal, he had made more and more compromises, praising Durant to the skies and granting him unlimited isolation privileges. Even Leonard could only serve as Durant's sidekick, focusing primarily on defense. The Warriors had seven games left, and aside from the Pelicans and Pacers, none of their remaining opponents were playoff teams. Their defensive failure also led to the Warriors ultimately losing 115:126 to the Rockets, ending their eleven-game winning streak since the All-Star break. The next day, the Warriors returned home and beat the Pacers 111:104, extending their lead over the Rockets to two games. With only two games remaining, they had all but secured the Western Conference's top seed, leaving the Rockets with only a theoretical chance to overtake them. The Rockets placed enormous importance on that game. D'Antoni used a seven-and-a-half-man rotation, and Anderson, who had repeatedly proven incapable of defending