Act 4 of the teams' long-running rivalry is guaranteed to be historic no matter how big a mismatch it appears on paper in Golden State's favour, as never before in any of North America's four major team sports have the same two teams met to decide the championship four times in a row.

James Harden led the Rockets with 32 points but made just 12 of 29 shots from the field.

After confirming about 90 minutes before tipoff that Paul would be unavailable, Houston had to settle, in the end, for giving Golden State an almighty scare — thanks largely to those narrow victories in Games 4 and 5 that obscured the fact they were outscored by 63 points during the course of the series.

To the Warriors, though, it was an even closer series than that. The quick 17-point lead that the Rockets seized in Game 6 with Paul rooted to the bench had even Golden State coach Steve Kerr convinced that Houston "could see the finals at that point."

But Houston's 11-point lead at halftime in Game 7, in a virtual replay of Game 6, failed to hold again in the face of yet another third-quarter rush from the reigning champions — Golden State won the quarter by a landslide. At the most critical point of the season, Harden no longer had Paul to share the playmaking or the pressure burden that the Rockets had purposefully split between them all season, hoping to keep both fresh and impactful throughout a long playoff run.

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"It's the worst thing that could happen to him," Houston coach Mike D'Antoni said of Paul, referring to the emotional hit taken by the All-Star guard to miss out on the game that could have sent him to the finals for the first time.

Harden, Paul and D'Antoni quickly formed a close bond through their respective past playoff disappointments — and the opportunity to banish their postseason demons and rewrite their legacies together. The opportunity at hand, as a result, made the tension tangible even before tipoff.

"You don't buy heart at the supermarket," D'Antoni said during his pregame news conference. "They've got it and we've got it. And we'll see what happens."

Neither heart nor Harden nor game contributions from Clint Capela (20 points and nine rebounds), Eric Gordon (23 points) and P.J. Tucker (14 points and 12 rebounds) were quite enough for a team that, in the very frank words of its general manager Daryl Morey, have long been "obsessed" with toppling the Warriors. Golden State found a way to overcome Thompson's three fouls in the first 3 minutes 39 seconds of the game, Durant's shaky start (three missed free throws in the first quarter) and Golden State's own significant absentee: Andre Iguodala.

The veteran swingman Iguodala, plagued by a lower leg contusion he suffered in a collision with Harden in Game 3, missed the final four games of the series.

"A big blow for us," Kerr said.

It will likely take multiple championships for the Warriors to feel they have truly avenged their unprecedented collapse from 3-1 in the 2016 NBA Finals. But surviving two elimination games and winning a Game 7 on the road — deep into a season they were widely expected to dominate — is a start.

"We haven't been in this position before," Curry said after Houston had seized a 3-2 lead. He went to call it "a chapter we need to figure out and finish this story."

Without Iguodala, who certainly isn't the Warriors' best player but is widely considered through the organization as the smartest, they figured it out indeed.

The New York Times