The Golden State Warriors beat the Houston Rockets in Game 7 of the Western Conference Finals. Now, for the fourth consecutive season, they’ll meet the Cleveland Cavaliers in the NBA Finals.
In a wild game of two halves, the Golden State Warriors beat the Houston Rockets 101-92 in a winner-take-all Game 7. While Houston, who was obsessed with beating Golden State, might have fallen short, they did give the Cleveland Cavaliers the blueprint to success.
For starters, let’s take a second and bask in the fact that the Rockets lost by nine yet missed 27 straight threes along with shooting just 15.9% from deep. On top of that, Rockets superstar James Harden was clearly robbed of three three-point shooting fouls, one of which he banked in yet was absurdly called on the ground.
With their star point guard and floor general Chris Paul out, the Rockets, who won 65 games throughout the course of the regular season, kept it close and arguably could’ve won if just a few plays went their way.
Hats off to them for a fantastic season.
However, the future holds a rematch for fans. The rematch of the two teams that have seen each other in this exact situation for the last three straight seasons.
The only noticeable difference between the two teams is the absence of Kyrie Irving. Cleveland dealt their superstar point guard this offseason, scraping together some decent role players through a montage of trades.
Now, it’ll be up to LeBron James and Tyronn Lue to use their on-court and off-court minds to make this upset happen.
They can make that happen by learning from the past. The Western Conference Finals taught us four important lessons that Lue should adopt for the NBA Finals.