Chris Paul Won’t Play In Game 7

7:13pm: Paul has a Grade 2 strain, Ramona Shelburne of ESPN tweets. The same injury cost Harden nearly three weeks of action earlier this season.

6:24pm: Chris Paul will not play in Game 7 of the Western Conference Finals tonight, Ben Golliver of Sports Illustrated tweets. Coach Mike D’Antoni told reporters the bad news during his pregame press conference.

It’s obviously a serious setback for the Rockets but not unexpected. Despite frantic efforts to get him ready to play, Paul simply did not have enough time to recover from his hamstring strain.

“There’s just no way. He couldn’t explode. He couldn’t push off on it,” D’Antoni said, according a tweet from Jonathan Feigen of the Houston Chronicle.

Paul suffered the injury late in the Rockets’ Game 5 victory on Thursday. Without him, the Rockers will rely heavily on Eric Gordon along with James Harden to run the attack in a seven-man rotation.

Houston obviously missed its star point guard during a second-half collapse Saturday that resulted in a 29-point loss in Game 6. The Rockets were outscored 64-25 after halftime.

The Warriors will also be without one of their key players, as swingman Andre Iguodala was declared out for the fourth straight game earlier in the day due to a left knee injury.

Paul has posted a 21.1/5.9/5.8 stat line through 17 postseason games with Houston. He is in the final year of the contract he signed with the Clippers, and reaching a new deal will be among the Rockets’ priorities this offseason.

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