Kevin Durant sat inside the visitor’s locker room at Paycom Center in Oklahoma City early Tuesday evening, aware but unbothered by the sea of blue shrieking with joy just a few hundred feet away.
The Thunder celebrated the culmination of an almost two-decade journey Tuesday by raising a banner for the franchise’s first-ever championship. Durant and the Rockets are now in Year 1 of their own journey. With eyes on raising a championship banner in Houston sooner than later, they found no use in watching another team’s jubilation.
"We’ll take our guys back while they're doing their celebrating," Rockets head coach Ime Udoka told reporters pregame.