The Golden State Warriors with Kevin Durant were the team that everyone in the NBA wanted to beat. When KD joined the 73-9 Warriors, the uproar in the media and around fanbases in the league was massive, with the expectation being that the team would be unbeatable when healthy. And while they were right to a certain extent, one team came closer than anyone else to achieve that.
The Houston Rockets with Chris Paul and James Harden looked set to knock the Warriors out of the playoffs in the Western Conference Finals in 2018 before Paul hurt his hamstring in Game 5 and was ruled out. They could still have made it happen in Game 7, but they squandered a double-digit lead by somehow missing 27 straight three-point attempts and ultimately falling short.
Kevin Durant has now spoken about that game, addressing the shots that the Rockets missed and claiming that the Warriors were meant to go to the Finals in conversation with JJ Redick on the Old Man and The Three podcast.
“We got down 15, walked into the locker room and thought this can’t be it. Like, we losing without CP. We had big dreams of destroying the league and we gonna end up like this. Then we made our first three, and I was like, alright, we got our legs under us.I knew we was gonna walk them after we made our first shot. Then, they couldn’t hit a three, they had wide-open ones. It was just meant for us to go to the finals”
The Rockets missing a playoff record 27 threes was something no one could have seen coming and it allowed KD and the Warriors to win their 2nd consecutive ring of that era. It’s still hard to believe how the whole situation went down and surely those Rockets feel like if they could do it all over again, the outcome would be a very different one.
