The Golden State Warriors will enter the 2018-19 season as the heavy title favorites once again as they look to lock up a three-peat (and four titles in five years). Aside from LeBron James joining the Rockets, there was really nothing that could have happened this summer that would have changed their status as favorites, but as it turned out, this offseason seems to have only furthered the gap between them and the rest.
With Houston losing Trevor Ariza and Luc Mbah a Moute while only adding Carmelo Anthony as a replacement on the wing, their top competitor in the West seems to have taken a step back. The Warriors, on the other hand, saw some shuffling of their roster with JaVale McGee departing and DeMarcus Cousins joining them as he works his way back from an Achilles injury.
That signing had players around the league upset, none more so than C.J. McCollum of the Portland Trail Blazers. McCollum had Kevin Durant join him on the Pull Up podcast this week, and McCollum explained why he was so upset about the Boogie signing. That led to Durant trolling McCollum by saying C.J. shouldn’t “worry about what goes on at the top of things” and laughing at him when McCollum said the Blazers had a squad capable of winning a title.
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The entire two-part podcast is an interesting listen as they dive into off the court topics and just generally have a quality conversation across the hour and a half they talk, but this part in particular was a bit painful as Durant completely shot down McCollum trying to put the Blazers on or near the same level as the Warriors.
In fairness to KD, the Blazers’ playoff history in recent years hasn’t exactly been great, but him saying the Blazers played “like an 8-seed” in the playoffs was downright cold (even if accurate).
