When the Golden State Warriors added Jimmy Butler at the trade deadline, it felt like a proper present for Steph Curry to at least give him a chance to play -- as he termed it -- meaningful basketball again.

Steph Curry, Jimmy Butler, and Draymond Green have taken the Warriors to the next level, and even as the seventh seed in the West, they are championship contenders. In Game 1 of the highly anticipated series,

The Rockets are the higher-seeded team in their showdown with the Warriors, having finished the regular season with a 52-30 record—second-best in the Western Conference. The Dubs, for their part, finished seventh with a 48-34 record and needed the play-in tournament to qualify for the postseason.