The Rockets deserved to win Thursday night’s game against the Warriors.

Not because of James Harden’s incredible 3-pointer with one second remaining in overtime.

Not because of his 41 prior points or 15 assists.

Not even because Kevin Durant was so far out of bounds he should have been wearing a fleece vest and holding a $18 beer when he “saved” a Warriors possession in the final minute of overtime, setting up a Stephen Curry go-ahead basket.

No, the Rockets deserved to win Thursday night because that was the Warriors’ will.

They handed them the game. And that’s become a trend for Golden State this season.

Thursday’s loss will turn into a referendum on the Warriors and Rockets’ rivalry.

But the Rockets really have no involvement in this mess. Yes, Thursday’s game was a referendum — one of many this season — but it was on the Warriors, and only the Warriors.

Golden State is still the only team that can beat Golden State — and they’re going to new lengths to do just that.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s difficult to swiftly gauge apathy when it comes to professional basketball played at the highest level — their level of coasting is 25 times more athletic than anything I’ve ever done in my life. But I can’t help but feel that the Warriors are giving us excellent on/off readings this season.

Of course, there are other factors behind the Warriors’ disappointing play — a lack of (useful) depth at center, a lack of a reliable (even if unspectacular) scoring option off the bench, Klay Thompson’s prolonged slumps (or season-long slump, depending on your definition of the term), the lack of on-court vitality between Durant and Curry — but the Dubs have made it impossible to not put apathy at the top of that list.

The Warriors became a dynasty behind their ability to come back in any contest, no matter how out of it they seemed to be. But they have, without a doubt, moved on from that era — Golden State has lost four games at home by more than 20 points and five such games overall.

Think back to the Christmas Day game against the Lakers: The Warriors fell behind by 15 at halftime, only to cut the Lakers’ lead to two points when LeBron James exited the game with a groin injury. The Dubs were going to steal another one. Only the Lakers decided to fight back, opening up another double-digit lead, and the Warriors, needing to decide if they were to counterpunch the counterpoint, swiftly and collectively — as if through a state of on-court telepathy — decided “nah”. They lost to a team led by Rajon Rondo and Ivica Zubac by 26.

Thursday night, the script was a bit different, but that same kind of laissez faire basketball showed up. The Warriors played solid ball in the first half against the Rockets, opening up a 17-point lead going into the break. If not for their 12 first-half turnovers, the Warriors would have probably been up by 25 or 30. The Warriors were back, baby!

Only a basketball game has two halves and the Warriors came out in the second without defensive conviction and with an offense lacking direction. The Rockets methodically (as if they had any other mode) worked their way back into striking distance while the Warriors did the bare minimum to keep them at arm’s length, at least until the final minute.

The Warriors’ second half had all the telltale signs of lacking effort — easy defensive breakdowns, six offensive rebounds by Rockets center Clint Capela, and a noticeable lack of ball movement on the offensive end.

The Warriors thought they could coast to a victory. And against a worse team, they probably could have.

Defense is the area of the game that falls by the wayside amid dynastic teams. That makes sense, right? Scoring is fun, but playing defense is hard work. And when you’ve gone to four straight NBA Finals, you’re probably not interested in putting in the hard work for a January game, even if it’s against a “rival”.

You’d probably never guess it, but the Warriors have the top offensive rating in the NBA this season. But unsurprisingly, they’re 15th in defensive rating (points allowed per 100 possessions), down four spots from last year’s final standing.

Last year the Warriors showed similar signs of malaise, but promised that they would “flip the switch” when the appropriate time (aka the playoffs) came.

They did just that, though it’s worth a reminder that the Warriors trailed by double-digits in two Western Conference Finals elimination games, the latter one on the road.

But last year “flipping the switch” merely meant giving a damn on defense.

This season, it seems as if they’ll need to activate on the offensive end as well.

Because despite that top offensive rating, it’s evident that the Warriors are disinterested in doing the difficult things on the offensive end as well this season.

The Warriors’ offense is predicated on creativity, passing, and relentless movement. But we’re seeing less of all three this campaign, especially in the half-court, and in Thursday’s second half, they were non-existent — particularly in crunch time, when Durant took seven of the Warriors’ final eight shots and didn’t seem the slightest bit interested in passing out of isolation.

It was a microcosm of a larger trend: Warriors are averaging their fewest passes per game since the first title campaign (blame Curry’s prolonged absence if you want, but your eyes can tell you that the problem still exists even when he’s on the court), they’re are taking nearly 10 more pull-up shots per game than they did in Durant’s first season with the team, and Thompson has turned into a Big Lots! version Kobe Bryant, shooting nearly twice as many mid-range shots as he was two years ago.

Warriors coach Steve Kerr even seems in on the apathy. Can you remember the last time the Warriors ran a crisp out-of-bounds play — the kind the Warriors used to get two or three wide-open shots from a contest?

And as for Thursday night’s iso-heavy offense down the stretch, Kerr was surprisingly dismissive — and even a little defensive:

“It’s just basketball. It’s the NBA,” he said. “That’s just the way it is. It would be nice if we could go picket fence for Jimmy Chitwood every play,”

It’s a C’s-get-degrees offense — only because of the talent curve, the Warriors’ C looks like everyone else’s A. But will that truth hold come the playoffs?

I get it: everyone is tired from never getting more than a few days off of this hellacious grind of a sport over the last few seasons, and it’s hard to muster the energy for games that, if we’re all being honest with ourselves, don’t mean a damn thing. After all, despite all this hand-wringing, the Warriors are 1.5 games out of first place in the Western Conference, behind a Denver team they know they can handle.

Plus, they’re about to add Boogie Cousins. (And what problem hasn’t been solved by Boogie?)

But maybe there is real competition in the Western Conference (I know it exists in the East). And maybe the Warriors are now members of the “real NBA” as Kerr calls it.

And if that’s the case, can the Warriors afford to sleepwalk through the regular season and still be able to reach the top gear necessary to win the postseason?

Every week it seems that the Warriors are going to do their best to find out.