Friday Bolts – 3.21.14
He Who Must Not Be Named wrote about KD: “Durant often unsuccessfully fights the natural nice in him. He sometimes comes off as a surly jerk in on-court postgame TV interviews because he’s trying to seem dead-seriously angry about winning a championship. Translation: He’s trying to come off more like Westbrook naturally does. Westbrook can genuinely be a surly jerk. He doesn’t have to try to be a late-game cold-blooded killer. He just is. Durant still appears to wrestle with exactly why God blessed him with such rare talent. Westbrook doesn’t seem to think about much but using his freakish speed, strength and spring to play basketball as hard as he can. Westbrook often seems happier than Durant.”
Tom Ziller of SB Nation trying to fix the lottery: “Where do you put the cut-off for number of picks determined by lottery? Ten is a nice round number, and would ensure the worst team gets the No. 11 pick. Based on the example above, the odds would give the worst team a better than 50 percent chance of picking in the top five and an 80 percent chance of picking in the top 10. As such, No. 11 seems like an appropriate backstop. The likelihood of a team tanking to ensure no worse than the No. 11 pick vs. the No. 12 pick seems small.”
Darnell Mayberry: “Durant started 1-for-6. He then made seven of his next eight. When he got it going, the Thunder never looked back. And I loved how Durant picked it up. He stopped hoisting shots and made a hustle play. He rebounded a Nick Collison miss and converted a layup. By the time he beat Dellavedova backdoor for a dunk off a feed from Collison early in the second, there was no stopping him. Just like that, Durant used one hustle play and one heady play to snap out of an early funk and start sizzling.”
The Blazers first tweet is something.
Anthony Slater: “Despite what we saw this past Sunday, when the Mavericks obliterated OKC at home without Russell Westbrook, the Thunder is capable of winning without its All-Star point guard. In fact, they’re now 23-9 this season without him. And this one was expected, facing a depleted Cavs team without its superstar (Kyrie Irving) and second-best player (Luol Deng). But still, it goes down as a significant victory, if only because it wipes out one of the Thunder’s remaining games without the resting Westbrook. Now, they get him back in Toronto tomorrow with a chance to sweep a road back-to-back.”
John Krolik of Cavs: The Blog: “I don’t get to watch Durant as much as I should as a basketball fan, but he seems to get so much better every time I see him play. He was getting himself into the game in so many more ways than he used to be able to — he was getting put-backs off of offensive rebounds, making gorgeous back-cuts for dunks, throwing down alley-oops, and immediately firing off a pass to an open teammate when he didn’t have the angle, even if that pass led to a hockey assist instead of a wide-open shot. Apparently this wasn’t typical, even for the Thunder — I always watch the opposing team’s broadcast feed to get as many points of view as I can, and they were raving about how the ball was moving better for the Thunder in the second quarter than it has all season. Oh, and then Durant finished the quarter with a filthy, filthy crossover to pull-up jumper to beat the buzzer. This dude is on another level right now.”
