Each NBA team’s most devastating injury in franchise history

Most devastating injury in Golden State Warriors history: Kevin Durant

For the first two seasons, the Kevin Durant/Golden State Warriors marriage went about as well as most people expected it would.

In that span, Durant averaged 25.7 points per game with a .525/.400/.882 shooting line. Combine that with the offensive and defensive contributions from Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, and Draymond Green, and it isn’t hard to figure out why the Warriors cakewalked to two NBA championships in 2017 and 2018.

Even with some infighting over Durant’s possible departure, those expectations didn’t waver in 2018-19 until he strained his calf in the Warriors’ second-round matchup against the Houston Rockets.

Durant would miss the remainder of that series and the Western Conference Finals against the Portland Trail Blazers, but given how Golden State handled the Rockets and the Blazers in those respective series, his absence didn’t seem to matter that much.

That wasn’t the case once the Warriors reached the NBA Finals to face Kawhi Leonard and the Toronto Raptors.

With Durant out for the first four games of the series, the Raptors jumped out to a 3-1 series lead. KD gave the Warriors a spark when he returned for Game 5, but after injuring his Achilles early in the second quarter, he missed the rest of the series. Between that and Thompson tearing his ACL in Game 6, Toronto’s title win became all but an inevitability.

Following this, Durant departed for the Brooklyn Nets and, with Curry and Thompson enduring a number of respective injuries in the two seasons following their last Finals appearance, the Warriors have regressed to the middle of the pack.