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One of the main reasons the Golden State Warriors' offense is so lethal is because the ball never sticks in one place. The players push the pace on offense at every turn and move the ball side to side. There's off-ball screens being set all the time, freeing Kevin Durant, Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson for wide-open 3-pointers.
In the 2018 Western Conference Finals, though, that offensive strategy wasn't working against the Houston Rockets, who had a top-10 defense during the 2017-18 regular season, So Kevin Durant, one of the greatest scorers the game has ever seen, started to take things into his own hands.
Durant started reverting back to his Oklahoma City Thunder days, where he would just take over the game in isolation plays. KD scored 37 points in the Game 1 win on the road. Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson were struggling with their shot, so Durant knew he had to be more selfish than usual, via Mark Medina of the Bay Area News Group:
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“The plays we usually get weren’t happening,” Durant said. “The quick 3s we were getting from Klay and Steph weren’t happening. Houston did a great job in taking it away. My job is to go get a basket over anybody that I can.
“Steph wasn’t shooting great. Klay wasn’t either. A lot of people were blaming that on me. But I was like, ‘No way. My job is to get us iso buckets when they switch on us.’ ”
Kevin Durant and the Warriors beat the Rockets in seven games, and ultimately won their second-straight championship after sweeping the Cleveland Cavaliers. Durant won his second Finals MVP.
In 21 postseason games last season, Durant averaged 29.0 points while shooting 48.7 percent from the floor and 34.1 percent from beyond the arc.
When it's all said and done, Kevin Durant is going to go down as maybe the most unguardable scorer in NBA history. There's nothing a defender can do to stop him from getting a shot off. You almost just have to hope he misses.
