Getty Images/Ringer illustration James Harden and Chris Paul couldn't reach the NBA's mountaintop, but they paved the way for Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving. Let's look back at arguably the greatest team ever to not make the Finals. Throughout this postseason, there have been moments that summon a sort of Proustian memory of NBA playoffs past. The strongest foothold on our collective basketball memory left standing, however, isn't so much a moment as it is an idea whose time … still hasn't quite arrived. "No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone," T.S. Eliot wrote more than a century ago. "His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists. You cannot value him alone; you must set him, for contrast and comparison, among the dead." The beleaguered bewilderment in Luka Doncic's eyes by the end of Game 2 against the Boston Celtics was the look of fatigue in the face of an overwhelming threat on the verge of history. I recognized that look. It was the look of James Harden, six years ago, at the end of the Houston Rockets' crushing Game 7 loss to the Golden State Warriors in the Western Conference finals—one...