PORTLAND — Just three years ago Alfonzo McKinnie played on the worst team in Luxembourg’s second division.
For those not geographically inclined, Luxembourg would be the second-smallest state in America by population, ahead of only Wyoming. No teams selected McKinnie in the 2015 NBA Draft, so he signed with the East Side Pirates, a semi-professional team in the middle of nowhere.
So it’s fair to say McKinnie hardly expected to be wearing a gray flat-brim hat that read “NBA FINALS” in white block letters in 2019, let alone ever.
“That’s exactly what’s going through my head,” McKinnie said after the Warriors advanced to their fifth consecutive NBA Finals on Monday, “me just thinking about where I started.