NBA playoffs: The Warriors have given the Pelicans their best shot, and they're still standing

New Orleans isn’t backing down. (Derick E. Hingle/USA Today Sports)

The New Orleans Pelicans and Utah Jazz host Game 4s with a chance to even the series against the Golden State Warriors and Houston Rockets. Follow along here for the latest analysis and commentary from The Post’s NBA reporter Tim Bontemps, and ask him questions in the comments section. Catch up on yesterday’s games here.

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Game 4 has seen the Warriors give the Pelicans their best shot – and the home team is still standing.

That’s an awfully impressive thing for the Pelicans to be able to say. The question now is if they can not just remain standing, but come out on top.

What once was an 18-point Golden State lead has been cut all the way down to as little as four late in the first half, and now stands at 58-51 at halftime in New Orleans.

It’s an awfully strange box score, though. Golden State is shooting 52.1 percent; New Orleans is shooting 38.1 percent. Golden State has an edge in fast break points (9-7) and have committed three turnovers that have become five Pelicans points, compared to eight Pelicans turnovers becoming 14 points for Golden State.

So how are the Pelicans in this game? They have gone 18 for 19 from the foul line. The Warriors, on the other hand, have gone just 4 for 5. Golden State has also missed its final nine threes of the first half – many of which were open looks that just didn’t go down.

None of this is to knock the Pelicans, who fought back admirably to give themselves a chance in the second half. But it’s clear New Orleans is going to have to clean some things up if it wants to not only be competitive in this game, but win it.

Ricky Rubio will remain out for Game 4 of Utah’s Western Conference semifinal series with Houston here in Salt Lake City.

Rubio, who hurt his hamstring in Game 6 of Utah’s first-round victory over Oklahoma City, was seen doing some jogging and movement drills after shootaround Friday morning before Game 3, but didn’t look all that close to being able to go full-speed. There was some optimism Rubio might be able to play in Game 4 after he was upgraded to questionable Saturday, but those hopes went away when the Jazz announced about four hours before opening tip that he would not play.

Power forward Derrick Favors, who sprained his ankle in Utah’s blowout loss to Houston in Game 3, remains questionable for Game 4. If he can’t play, Jae Crowder would seem to be the most likely candidate to replace him in the Jazz’s starting lineup.

If you want to know whether the Warriors can be beaten, there is one stat worth paying attention to: the combined three-point shooting percentage for Draymond Green and Andre Iguodala.

When Golden State has at least one of Green and Iguodala rolling from three-point range, an already high-powered team is basically unguardable. While Iguodala hasn’t taken a three in either of the last two games, Green is now 7 for 13 after making two in the first quarter Sunday.

With Stephen Curry, Kevin Durant and Klay Thompson on the court, defenses are going to force Green and Iguodala to shoot by default. If at least one of them is taking advantage, it takes the Warriors from being a tough team to stop to one that simply can’t be stopped.

It’s amazing what happens when a team plays its best lineup to start the game, isn’t it?

Golden State has made six of its first eight shots, including three-pointers from Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson, to take a 14-4 lead over New Orleans in the opening minutes of Game 4.

Sometimes, this stuff isn’t complicated. Don’t play JaVale McGee, start your best lineup and good things will follow. The Warriors are experiencing that early in Game 4.

Rajon Rondo and Draymond Green have had numerous incidents over the first three games of the Golden State Warriors-New Orleans Pelicans series.

Warriors Coach Steve Kerr is fine with Rondo serving his usual role as a professional irritant. What he’s not fine with, though, is Rondo potentially hurting Stephen Curry.

“I don’t see anything wrong with it, other than the tripping,” Steve Kerr told reporters after Saturday’s practice of Rondo’s typical antics. “I’m all for getting underneath a guy’s skin, but you can’t try to step on a guy’s foot or try to swipe a guy underneath his feet while he’s shooting. Those are dangerous plays.”

Kerr later said the Warriors were going to alert the league to the plays, but that “it’s not going to do anything.”

This is what Rondo has done for his entire career, going back to his days as the understudy to Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and Ray Allen with the champion Boston Celtics a decade ago. One of the smartest players in the league, he’s also one of the wiliest competitors in the league, one who knows exactly how to get under the skin of every opponent he’s facing.

He’s undoubtedly done that to the Warriors thus far — and, in particular, Green, whom Rondo has made a point of going after time and again so far in this series. It has looked like Green might lose his cool a few times and go over the edge, as he did in taking a swipe at San Antonio Spurs forward Davis Bertans in the first round and picking up a flagrant foul point.

Remember: earning four such points results in a suspension. Green and the Warriors know this all too well from two years ago, when Green was suspended for Game 5 of the NBA Finals — a game that allowed the Cleveland Cavaliers to launch their comeback from down three games to one in the series and win the championship.

But Green, to his credit, has avoided picking up either a flagrant point or a technical so far in this series, despite myriad run-ins with Rondo — including one, at halftime of Game 2, that led to Charles Barkley blurting out, on national television, that he wanted to punch Green in the face.

“I don’t think there’s such thing as crossing the line in basketball. You competing,” Green told reporters Saturday. “So when you competing, you gonna do what you gotta do to win. I never understand when somebody say someone is crossing the line. I said he’s trying to bait me. Yeah, he’s trying to bait me to get a technical foul.

“But at the end of the day, that’s still him trying to win a basketball game. Y’all create these narratives of someone crossing the line. There is no crossing the line to win. You gonna do whatever you gotta do to win.

“I don’t believe in crossed lines. Y’all say I crossed lines. I say I did what I set out to do or I didn’t do what I set out to do.”

Regardless of how Game 4 turns out Sunday, Rondo will be in the middle of everything that happens. He’ll make sure of that.

The Warriors gave the Pelicans a chance to get into Game 3 of their Western Conference semifinal series Friday night by starting JaVale McGee in place of Andre Iguodala.

Will Steve Kerr make the same mistake twice in Game 4 Sunday afternoon? He isn’t saying before the game, but one would have to think he won’t.

It is still baffling why Kerr went away from starting small in Game 3, after it had so much success in the first two games of the series. His argument after the game — one he repeated again Saturday to reporters at the team’s practice in New Orleans — is that the Warriors have so many centers that he was trying to buy some minutes with McGee on the court because the team had two games in less than 48 hours.

Just my two cents: I’d personally have avoided the extra 48 minutes that will come with New Orleans facing Golden State in Game 5 back in Oakland — the minimum extra time this series will go after the Pelicans won Game 3.

The guess here is that Kerr will go with the small lineup of Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, Kevin Durant, Draymond Green and Iguodala to start Game 4. That will only make it stranger that he didn’t choose to do so at the start of Game 3.

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