Thursday Bolts – 12.2.10
On Twitter last night, someone said at Kevin Durant that he’s the second best player on the Thunder now. Durant’s response: “I’m cool with that!” He also tweeted, “It’s all about wins at the end of the day plus he’s my teammate I’m happy whenever he plays well! I jus wanna win thas all.”
From ESPN Stats: “There’s no shame in barely missing a triple-double, especially when you have the kind of performance Oklahoma City Thunder point guard Russell Westbrook had in a triple-overtime win over the New Jersey Nets on Wednesday night. Westbrook’s [38] points, 15 rebounds and nine assists made him the first player to at least reach those benchmarks this season. A check of Basketball-Reference.com shows he’s one of only two guards to do that since 1990, Vince Carter being the other in 2006-07.”
Susan Bible with a great Serge Ibaka piece: “Born September 18, 1989, in the city of Brazzaville, the capital of the Republic of Congo, to basketball-playing parents, Ibaka, one of 18 children, lived through poverty with no electricity or running water, or even food, at times. By the age of fourteen, he had lived through civil unrest in his country, his mother’s untimely death and his father’s political imprisonment. The one constant was his love of basketball. He learned the game on worn outside courts wearing sneakers with cardboard inserts to cover holes in the soles.”
KD is expected to play Friday in Toronto.
Chris Sheridan of ESPN: “The focus afterward was on what point guard Russell Westbrook pulled off offensively in the third overtime, scoring all 13 of Oklahoma City’s points. What was secondary, but ultimately equally important, was the way he played defense — how softly he played it, actually — in the final 6.8 seconds of that third extra period. After Westbrook went to the line and scored his 12th and 13th points of the third overtime to put the Oklahoma City Thunder ahead of the New Jersey Nets 123-120, the Nets were out of timeouts and had to go the length of the court to attempt a game-tying 3. And as point guard Jordan Farmar (career-high 28 points) dribbled the ball upcourt just a teeny bit slower than full speed, Westbrook laid off him.”
Someone else making noise about Westbrook being OKC’s best player.
Westbrook’s lovely putback:
PBT: “It wasn’t the prettiest of wins. But without Durant, in a game they should have lost a few times over, you take it and don’t look back. Call it gutty if you want. The Thunder are finding ways to win, not unlike what happened last year, and if they really are putting it together the rest of the West should be worried.”
Nets Are Scorching: “But wait, there’s more ugly. How about the end of the first overtime, when the Nets had a chance to win at the buzzer and the best they could come up with on offense is a 22-footer from Lopez in the corner. Or the in the second OT, when Avery Johnson foolishly used the team’s last timeout with the team up three and less than 5 seconds to play, only to see OKC’s Jeff Green draw a foul on a THREE POINT SHOT by Stephen Graham (let’s not even get into the fact that the stupid shot almost went in).”
Darnell Mayberry: “There is no doubt in my mind the Thunder should have fouled Anthony Morrow with 1.5 seconds remaining in regulation. The counter argument in that situation always is the risk of fouling a player while he’s shooting, as evidenced by Stephen Graham sending Jeff Green to the line in the second OT. But when Morrow put the ball on the floor, taking one dribble before hoisting his game-tying runner, that presented a perfect time to wrap up Morrow well before he could get a shot off. As exciting as this triple-overtime thriller was, it should never have gotten to that point.”