Durant, Warriors roll to Game 1 win
Kevin Durant scored 37 points and Klay Thompson added 28 to lead Golden State as the Warriors claimed a 119-106 win in the long-awaited showdown with the Rockets in Game 1 of the best-of-seven Western Conference finals last night in Houston.
Starting a playoff series on the road for the first time since 2014, the Warriors trailed by as many as nine early, but had evened it up by halftime and used a big run at the beginning of the fourth quarter to pull away.
Eric Gordon opened the final period with a 3-pointer to get the top-seeded Rockets within four, but Thompson scored the first eight points of a 13-4 run to make it 100-87 with about eight minutes left.
Houston used a 9-3 spurt, where James Harden scored five, to cut the lead to 103-96 with less than five minutes to go. But Thompson struck again, hitting a wide open 3-pointer to leave the Warriors ahead by 10 with four minutes left.
Harden scored 41 to lead the Rockets, who lost at home for the second time this postseason.
Steph Curry added 18 for the Warriors, who are in the conference finals for a franchise-record fourth straight time. It’s Houston’s first trip since 2015 when Golden State won the series in five games.
Elsewhere in the NBA — Even with the conference finals going on, the NBA’s eyes turn to the future this week.
A future that, perhaps, will have less tanking.
The draft lottery — the last before changes come next year to dissuade tanking — is tonight, and then about 70 players will partake in the draft combine that starts tomorrow. Those events are both happening in Chicago, as are some various league meetings such as a gathering of NBA general managers and other frontoffice executives.
But the biggest news will be made by 14 ping-pong balls that will decide who drafts No. 1 next month.
Phoenix has a 25 percent chance of winning the No.1 pick, followed by Memphis (19.9 percent), Dallas (13.8 percent) and Atlanta (13.7 percent). The rest of the candidates for No. 1 are Orlando (8.8 percent), Chicago (5.3), Sacramento (5.3), Cleveland (2.8), New York (1.7), Philadelphia (1.1), Charlotte (0.8), Detroit (0.7), the Los Angeles Clippers (0.6) and Denver (0.5).