After a Game 3 blowout that stands as the most lopsided loss in franchise playoff history, the Houston Rockets had their backs against the wall, facing the prospect of a 3-1 deficit if they couldn’t get their act together for Tuesday’s Game 4. But James Harden, Chris Paul and company aren’t dead yet.

James Harden scored 24 of his 30 points in the first half, including a pair of exceptionally memorable ones, to carry the Rockets out of an early hole. Chris Paul scored 13 of his 27 in the second half to help not just withstand a furious Golden State push, but push back even harder.

Eric Gordon shook off an ice-cold long-range shooting performance to hit a huge 3-pointer with 2:27 to go in the fourth quarter. And after weathering the Warriors’ trademark Stephen Curry-led third-quarter flurry, Houston limited Golden State to just 12 points in the final frame and watched a last-gasp Curry 3-point try come up empty to hold on for a 95-92 win in Game 4 in the closest, most hotly contested and most thrilling game of the third round of the 2018 NBA playoffs.

Chris Paul celebrates a massive Game 4 win that got his Rockets even with Stephen Curry’s Warriors in the best-of-seven Western Conference finals. More

With their often-beleaguered superstar backcourt leading the way, the Rockets scrapped and clawed to earn their first-ever playoff win on the road in the Bay Area. After losing Game 1 on their home court, they have now knotted the Western Conference finals up at 2-2 and wrested back home-court advantage. They can draw within one win of the franchise’s first NBA Finals appearance since 1995 with a victory in Game 5 at Toyota Center on Thursday.

A matchup between the NBA’s two best offenses turned on the defensive end, as Houston and Golden State — who ranked sixth and ninth in defensive efficiency during the regular season, respectively — wreaked havoc on one another with physicality, length, athleticism and aggression. The Warriors shot just 35-for-89 (39.3 percent) from the field, while the Rockets went only 30-for-77 (39 percent). And in a game that would prove to be a war of attrition, as both Mike D’Antoni and Steve Kerr cut their rotations to the bone, it was the Rockets that had enough in the tank in the late stages — if only barely — to get over the finish line.

Houston went just seven-deep on Tuesday, with D’Antoni demanding a lot out of his top guns and getting 12 crucially decent minutes (mostly, surprisingly, on the defensive end) from wild-card wing Gerald Green. The Warriors, on the other hand, sorely missed the injured Andre Iguodala’s defensive versatility and steady playmaking hand on a night when Draymond Green logged 45-plus minutes, Kevin Durant played 43, and Curry and Klay Thompson both got 39, and on which Nick Young was a -14 in 12 1/2 minutes and the typically dependable Shaun Livingston was a -15 in 15 1/2 minutes.

Curry led four Warriors in double figures with 28 points and a 6-for-13 mark from 3-point range, and once again ignited a big Warriors run by scoring 11 points in 96 seconds midway through a third quarter that saw Golden State turn a seven-point deficit into a 10-point lead:

Durant added 27 (albeit on 10-for-26 shooting) with 12 rebounds, while Green came up two assists shy of a triple-double, scoring 11 points with 13 rebounds, eight assists, two steals and a block.

But after racing out to a 12-0 lead, holding Houston scoreless for the first five minutes and 18 seconds of the game, Golden State couldn’t put the hammer down. They allowed Harden and later Paul to get into scoring and playmaking rhythm, which came back to haunt the Warriors when they ran out of gas down the stretch.

The Rockets erased their early deficit with a dominant second quarter in which their dynamic backcourt duo outscored the Warriors’ entire team 29-18. Houston did the bulk of that damage after Curry picked up his third personal foul and Kerr put him on the bench with 5:06 to go in the first half. That limited Golden State’s offense, which Houston kept pushing and forcing out of its comfort zone, setting the stage for the Rockets to go on a 19-8 run to close the half and head into intermission with a 53-46 lead, thanks in part to some good, opportunistic defensive plays by Harden (no, that’s not a typo):