HOUSTON — Kevin Durant waited for the ball to come his way and it never reached his outstretched hand. James Harden knew where Draymond Green wanted to go with the ball, jumped the pass, knocked the ball ahead and scooped it up for an emphatic, one-handed jam that put the Houston Rockets up 15 points in Game 7 of the Western Conference finals Monday night. Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr called time, and while Harden celebrated in an odd fashion, grabbing his nose as if it were bleeding, Green was scolding Durant as a parent would a disobedient child.

Green needed Durant to come to the ball — urgently, decisively — like he wanted it and not like he expected it to get there. The Warriors’ season was again in danger of ending prematurely, against a Rockets team that wasn’t ready to use the absence of Chris Paul as an excuse for not fulfilling its purpose as Golden State killers. And here the Warriors were, here Durant was, chilling and lacking the passion needed to grab ahold of what was in front of them.

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Stephen Curry acknowledged that “in that moment, it could’ve splintered” for a team unaccustomed to back-to-the-wall adversity in the Durant era. Green snapped, Durant snapped back and the much-needed, heated exchange turned “a little rough patch” — as Curry called it — into an awakening. And before the night was over, the Warriors were passing around and posing with the silver ball perched atop the hardest earned conference championship trophy of this unprecedented four-year run for the franchise, following a 101-92 victory at Toyota Center.

The Warriors soak in advancing to the NBA Finals once again. (Getty) More

“It’s just another step, another step in your journey that I can pinpoint, once I’m done playing and say, ‘Well, I went through this, too,’ ” Durant told Yahoo Sports as he exited the arena after scoring a game-high 34 points. “When I’m talking to a younger player or — who knows? — if I’m coaching in a couple years, 10 to 12 years from now, I’ll have an opportunity to look back and say, ‘The second year I was with the Warriors, we tried to get to a back-to-back championship, going Game 7 in the Western Conference and we won on the road.’ I can say that now. And give back my experience to someone else. It was cool to see us figure it out as a team and break through as a team.”

Durant had the most to lose if the Warriors had been unable to break through against the undermanned Rockets. He was brought to Golden State to make the franchise untouchable for however long it took to capture enough championship trophies to be deemed a dynasty. The Rockets weren’t trying to play along with that plan and devised a scheme that flustered the Warriors and especially Durant, whose mood shifted from cocky to confused to petulant to miserable as the series progressed. And while Durant had played in three other Game 7’s before Monday, never had the expectations been higher and the potential for an unyielding, scathing summer of criticism been greater had his team failed to reach the NBA Finals, let alone repeat as champions.

During his time in Oakland, Durant had been peppered with complaints that he had ruined the league’s competitive balance, complaints that were easy for him to ignore with a championship ring in hand and the potential for more within reason. But as the Warriors struggled and lost their identity against these Rockets, Durant had to hear how he had broken the team by bringing those hero-ball isolations with him from Oklahoma City and made the organization that embodied fun, less so. All of this less than a year after he had outplayed LeBron James, won Finals MVP and helped bring the second championship in three years to town. With four in-their-prime all-stars, including two regular-season MVPs, the Warriors have an abundance of riches that makes their success seem inevitable and easy.

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