While the Houston Rockets have made it known all season long they’re consumed with taking down the Golden State Warriors, the defending champions don’t share a similar “obsession” according to Draymond Green.
The teams will meet in the Western Conference Finals after storming through the playoffs, setting up what was an inevitable clash of the titans.
Whereas Golden State have been here before, having reached three straight Finals and coming away with two titles, Houston have shown an eagerness to dethrone the champions to blaze their own path.
“They have made it known that their team is built to beat us,” Green said after the Warriors eliminated the New Orleans Pelicans in Game 5 of the second round. “Their ‘obsession’ or whatever you want to call it, it is what it is.”
Though the Rockets claimed two of the three regular-season meetings and won an NBA-best 65 games to keep Golden State from grabbing the one seed for the first time since 2014, Green claimed his side aren’t fixated on proving anything to their challengers.
“Man, we won two championships in three years. We’re not about to run off talking about how bad we want to play somebody,” Green said.
“We want to win another championship, and it don’t matter who’s in the way of that. If you’re in the way of that, then you happen to be in the way. But we’re not about to run around like, ‘Yeah, we want to play them in the conference finals.’ For what? It doesn’t matter to us who we play. However, we got them. All right, now let’s get it. We get to it now.
“We’ve got a goal. Whoever is in the way of that goal, then we got to see you. You got to see us. All right now, they’re in the way. Perfect. But we’re not running around talking about, ‘Man, we want them bad.’ Nah, we want a championship bad. Another one.”
