Exit sign?

When we last left those poor Golden State Warriors, they were locked in a death struggle with the Houston Rockets and without Kevin Durant, the best basketball player on the planet now that LeBron James has disappeared into the wormhole that is the Los Angeles Lakers.

It looked like curtains for the Warriors ... maybe ... finally. The Rockets were making Steph Curry play defense and wearing him out, meaning he wasn't Steph-ing like usual. Neither was the other Splash Brother, Klay Thompson, who was mostly chucking anvils up there from his home base on the 3-point line.

So what happened?

Um ... well ...

The Warriors dispatched the Rockets in Game 6, on the road, without the injured Durant.

And now they're up two-games-to-nil on the Portland Trail Blazers in the Western Conference finals, still without Durant.

Which means they are 3-0 in the playoffs without KD, whom team officials now say might not be back for the duration of the series. And yet somehow the Warriors have regained their Warrior-ness, in a very retro sort of way. It's like 2015 all over again, with Steph killing it and everyone else following his lead the way they did before KD ever arrived.

The takeaway from that for some is that the Warriors are actually better without KD, that they spread the floor better and play a more cohesive game. This is probably not true; more likely, they play a different game with KD on the floor, and his presence gives them a powerful go-to when everything else breaks down. Because no one yet has figured out how to stop him when he decides not to be stopped.

Tell you what this We're Better Without KD trope does do, however.

It makes the coming separation between the Warriors and KD a lot smaller deal.

Absence doesn't always make the heart grow fonder, you see. Sometimes it just makes the heart see things through a different lens.

This one suggests the Warriors would still be the Warriors without KD, a notion one would think changes both KD's and the Warriors' perspective on Durant's coming free agency.

In other words: Wherever he goes, it'll likely be shrugs all around.