Strength in Numbers
The case for rooting for the Warriors falls mostly into the category of “eh, whatever.”
KD has already won a championship with the Warriors since leaving the Thunder. Ideally, LeBron would have beaten the Warriors last season, and we’d all be able to throw our whole selves into anti-Warrior fervor, cheering for epic, ultimate failure and for KD to be seen as the poison pill that brought down a dynasty.
Unfortunately, that’s not the case, and KD already has a ring. With that in mind, who cares if he gets more? His decision was already validated as the correct, easy route that it was ridiculed as at the time. The argument can even be made that his decision becomes more cowardly with each ring he stacks on his fingers.
Oh, two rings? That’s some nice jewelry your teammates won for you. Wow, ten rings? Yeah, well that’s what happens when you join the best, most winning 73-9 team ever.
The flip-side of that coin is, should the Warriors lose, KD’s decision will seem far less cowardly. If they lose, only one year after forming, and to a team that only just formed, nobody can say “KD ruined the NBA” anymore. In fact, maybe this was the bare minimum that he had to do to be able to compete.
He will no longer have chosen a juggernaut, he’ll have chosen a scrappy underdog. One with three Hall-of-Famers waiting for him, but still, you get the idea.
Add to that the fact that the Warriors are probably going to win. The Rockets are 6-point underdogs at home, a ridiculous number for a one-seed. Chris Paul is likely out. The Warriors have a huge playoff experience and track-record advantage. Why root for the losing side? Why put yourself through that?
CP3 and the Beard
James Harden and Chris Paul have a well-documented, probably overblown history of Playoff struggles. There’s a term for what they’ve been widely accused of doing. It won’t be said here, but it rhymes with “artichoke,” and the general idea is that they tend to not do exactly the best thing for their teams in situations where doing the best thing is most important.
That reputation is almost surely not deserved. Chris Paul and James Harden are in the top handful of people at their positions in NBA history. Sure, this is the farthest Paul has ever advanced in his career. Sure, Harden had that performance against the Spurs where a concussion had to be theorized to explain it. Okay, so CP disappeared in a Game 7 before. Fine, the Beard no-showed in the Finals when he was with the Thunder.
It’s probably nothing. They’re probably great, and it’s all probably just a coincidence, but there’s not a chance in the world that’s how the internet will see it. If the Rockets blow a 3-2 lead with home-court advantage, Harden and Paul (if he plays) will be dragged through the mud. That’s not exactly something Thunder fans would be sad about.
There’s also the very real, very depressing angle that, should Houston triumph, it would make Russ the last of the three Thunder U MVPs without a ring. That’s almost too sad to think about, though. Oh god, I’m thinking about it, and I can’t stop. Make it stop.
Ultimate Goal
As previously stated, the dream is that neither of these teams get the chip. Let’s be brutally, sadly honest, though: the Warriors are beating the Cavs. They might even sweep them. There is a chance, however, of the ring not counting, and here’s how.
Say Chris Paul can’t go in Game 7. Say the Warriors beat the Rockets, who had gotten out to a 3-2 lead with their full squad only to be derailed by an injury. Then, say they go on to sweep the Cavs. Think about what the storyline would be then.
The Warriors’ history of facing easy roads due to injury has been well documented, but has been mostly overblown. Every team goes through injured opponents.
This one, however, might hold up. This might be the most concrete asterisk we’ve ever seen. A one-seed taking a decisive lead, with home-court advantage, and then losing one of their two best players, leading to an upset and an overmatched opponent in the Finals?
The Rockets would have to be mentioned every single time the Warriors’ 2018 title came up.