SAN FRANCISCO – The Houston Rockets are all too aware that they blew a chance to gain the upper hand in their first-round playoff series against the shorthanded Golden State Warriors.

The only consolation for the relatively inexperienced Rockets is that they know they can play much better, and that the mistakes they made in their 104-93 loss to the Jimmy Butler-less Warriors in Saturday’s Game 3 can be easily corrected ahead of Monday’s Game 4.

“I think every chance you don’t win a game you feel like you could win,” Rockets guard Fred VanVleet said after Saturday’s game, “is a missed opportunity.”

The Rockets held a 71-69 lead going into the fourth quarter and were up 84-83 with just over five minutes remaining. But Houston made only two of its next seven shots and trailed by eight with just over two minutes to go.

That, along with the six fourth-quarter turnovers they committed, which led to eight Warriors points, sealed the Rockets’ fate.

A handful of Rockets players played their first road playoff game Saturday night, including Merced’s Jalen Green and San Leandro’s Amen Thompson. Now they must win at least once in San Francisco to move on to the next round.

“Our rotations were just pretty poor today,” Green said. “We’ve got to be better at rotations. We know what to do. We’ve done it before. We’ve just got to get back to that.”

VanVleet had 13 points in the first quarter but only four more points the rest of the way. Green torched the Warriors for a combined 45 points in the first two games in the series but was held to nine points on 4-of-11 shooting in Game 3.

“The (Warriors) have been going after (VanVleet and Green) quite a bit in the pick-and-rolls. Kind of hawking them full-court,” Rockets coach Ime Udoka said. “When they did put two bodies on the ball, we didn’t do a good enough job making them pay tonight.

“As you saw, we were 19 for 48 in the paint. That’s not good enough, point-blank layups or floaters or making the right read from there, you have to convert those.”

The Rockets know they won’t be able to shut down Warriors star Steph Curry, who finished with 36 points and was the biggest reason why the game was as close as it was after three quarters.

But Houston cannot afford to let bench players Gary Payton II and Buddy Hield make major impacts. Payton finished with a postseason career-high 16 points, including 11 in the fourth quarter, and Hield was 5-for-11 on 3-point attempts to help finish with 17 points in 29 minutes.

In all, the Warriors’ bench outscored the Rockets’ reserves 42-28, huge considering Butler’s absence with a pelvic injury and deep gluteal muscle contusion he sustained in a hard fall during Game 2.

“Obviously, Jimmy adds another layer to that because they are a different team without him,” VanVleet said. “But Gary Payton stepped up tonight. Both the guys off the bench played key minutes.”

“They have their physicality on defense, and then when we did have the good looks, we missed a lot of point-blank stuff at the basket, little floaters, and some layups,” Udoka said. “They did what they did all game. We did what we can all game. Payton and some of their guys rolling out made plays. We didn’t.”

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The Rockets had 16 points in the paint in the third quarter, getting some easy drives to the basket. But their miscues on both sides of the ball were too much to overcome, and cleaning those up will be a massive focal point as they try to take back home-court advantage and set up a best-of-three with two games in Houston.

“Their gamble (on double-teaming the ball) paid off. We didn’t make them pay, especially with the paint shots,” Udoka said. “So, something you can easily correct is obviously taking care of the ball a little bit better, finding the outlets out of that, and making them pay.

“It’s a gamble on both sides when both teams are blitzing each other, and their guys made a few more plays than our guys tonight.”