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In their first season back with their full core of Klay Thompson, Steph Curry, and Draymond Green, the Golden State Warriors are headed back to the NBA Finals for the sixth time in the last eight seasons. With Golden State being Finals-bound without him, Brooklyn Nets forward Kevin Durant became a topic of conversation. Durant famously left the Warriors in 2019 to join Kyrie Irving on the Brooklyn Nets, who were the favorites to win the title at the beginning of the season. With the Warriors heading back to the Finals without Durant for the first time since 2016, NBA Twitter didn’t hold back on the Nets superstar.
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Klay Thompson on Finals Return: ‘Pure Elation’
The Warriors are once again Western Conference Champions, but it has been anything but a cakewalk. Catastrophic injuries to their stars Curry and Thompson had them in the draft lottery in 2020, where they drafted center James Wiseman, who has been out since the 2020 season with a meniscus injury. Then Thompson suffered another catastrophic injury, tearing his Achilles just before the start of the 2021 season, which had Golden State in the play-in tournament where they lost to the Los Angeles Lakers and Memphis Grizzlies.
But Thompson’s star shined the brightest when the Warriors needed him the most, netting 32 points in arguably his biggest game of the playoffs. It has taken a while for Klay to get back here, and he knows that the Warriors’ job isn’t finished yet, but he can’t help but be excited at the moment.
“Just pure elation, just a lot of gratitude, humility. It’s just, I don’t know, any word for ‘happy,’ any synonym for ‘happy’ because it’s just so hard to get here. There’s been so many great players, some of the best ever to play that haven’t even played in the Finals,” Thompson said to NBC Sports Bay Area’s, Kerith Burke.
“That’s how competitive the NBA is, the best league in the world. Now that we’re back, it’s incredible. Very happy for Dub Nation because they sent me so many nice messages the last couple of years, so encouraging.”
Analyst Slams Durant for Warriors Exit
Durant and the Nets got eliminated from this year’s playoffs by way of a 4-0 sweep by the Boston Celtics. Curry and the Warriors, on the other hand, are four wins away from winning four NBA titles since 2015. Before the start of the Western Conference Finals, ESPN analyst Stephen A Smith said he believed that if Steph and the Warriors made it back to the NBA Finals without Durant, it would put the Nets star’s decision to leave the Bay into question.
“It’s not that he left Golden State, it’s what he left Golden State for. If the Golden State Warriors advance to the finals… unfortunately and totally unfair to him, people will remember [Durant] more as being the dude who left Steph Curry for Kyrie Irving than they’ll remember the championships. Because that’s how idiotic that move appears to be as of right now because of how unreliable Kyrie Irving has been,” Smith said during the May 18 edition of “First Take”.
“You were about going someplace on your own but choosing Kyrie Irving as a compadre, as opposed to Steph Curry. Now as a basketball player, Kyrie Irving is sensational. As far as I’m concerned, he’s on that Steph Curry level, the brother’s spectacular and Kyrie Irving is a hall of fame talent. But in terms of the drama that comes along with him, considering the fact that Kevin Durant is against drama, he doesn’t want any parts of that. Interfering with a basketball season and a basketball team. It seemed foolhardy for him to make that selection.”
The Warriors are four wins away from their first NBA title since 2018. It will be interesting to see if KD can do the same with the Nets next season.
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