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The Roar

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The full Russ: Westbrook takes over Game 1

Russell Westbrook, the former MVP. (Wikipedia Commons)
Expert
17th May, 2016
3

To borrow from Robert Downey Jr, you never want to go full Russ. Preferably, you’d like to go half-Russ. Retain the version that attacks the rim, lives at the line, snares ludicrous offensive rebounds and causes defensive havoc.

Lose the version that gambles recklessly, jacks threes against all common decency, and commits brain fades at the precise moment when the brain must not fade.

But there is no half-Russ. There is only full Russ, and in Oakland yesterday, by God, it was beautiful.

Russell Westbrook looked like he was going to cost his team the game in the first half, and then he won it for them in the second half. So it goes.

The Thunder walked into the locker room at halftime, deflated after Stephen Curry’s buzzer-beater that put the Warriors up 60-47. The Warriors were too fast, too devastating off turnovers, and too cohesive. Everything was moving, and Oklahoma City couldn’t keep up.

It seems impossible to think that a game was moving too fast for Westbrook, basketball’s answer to futuristic light-speed UFO technology, but he looked out of place. At the half he had three points on one-of-eight shooting.

But the beauty of Russ is that if he starts one-of-eight, you know he’s going to finish with over 20 shots. You can’t take a backseat if you’re the fastest car in town.

He ‘only’ shot six-of-13 in the second half, but his relentless mania changed the entire course of the game, and perhaps the series.

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The list of players who can enforce their will on a game and decide its outcome can be counted on one hand. Marvellously, three of those fingers are taken up by names in this series. Westbrook might be more volatile than Steph Curry or Kevin Durant, but he’s also more reliable, in one sense at least: he will never go quietly into the night.

Twice in person I’ve seen Durant ply his trade. He is magnificent, and his magnificence is artful. He kills the opposition by a thousand slow cuts, much like Dirk Nowitzki, a player he is beginning to resemble more and more in certain idiosyncratic ways.

The first time I saw Durant, in a game overshadowed by a certain Blake Griffin dunk over Kendrick Perkins, he scored 36 of the quietest points you’ll ever see. Crossover, pull-up mid-range fade-away. Three coming off a screen. Jumper off a curl. Lay-up off a cut. He is an artist, and every made basket is another delicate stroke on his canvas.

On the other hand, Westbrook eats canvases because they look at him funny.

The second time I saw the Thunder was last year against these Warriors at Oracle. The game was a bloodbath, with yesterday’s first half extrapolated to all four quarters, but even worse for OKC. Even still, Westbrook left his mark.

There was one passage of play where Westbrook caught the ball wide-open on the left baseline at around 15-feet. Three Golden State defenders crowded the paint. A human being would have taken the open jump-shot, attempted to draw a defender and then pass, or kick the ball out to the perimeter. Not Westbrook.

He sized up the situation and then consciously made the following decision: I am going to jump full speed into the three big bodies in front of me and see what happens. He violently collided with the defenders, threw up an awful shot that had no hope, and Golden State broke out in transition. Still though, it was majestic. And I’ve always wondered exactly what magical synapses sparked in Westbrook’s brain the moment he looked at what was in front of him and decided that cannonballing into numerous imposing bodies was the best course of action.

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That’s the reality of Westbrook: he is inexplicable. He will never have games as unanimously brilliant as Durant or Curry will have. There will always be drawbacks. He had seven steals yesterday, but the one play that the commentators focused on was the steal he didn’t come up with, when he sold out on a pass that left Curry wide open to drill a three in the third quarter and restore Golden State’s lead to double digits.

The mistakes, however, are becoming less and less. He is a more controlled Westbrook now, which until recently was a paradox. The selfishness in his game has largely been eradicated, and the fact that he averaged more assists this season than John Wall, Chris Paul or Ricky Rubio is a credit to that transformation.

He also, perhaps for the first time, seems to truly understand that at the end of games the ball needs to be in Durant’s hands. Durant missed seven shots in a row in the last eight minutes of game one. The Russ of old may have said “Screw this” and taken matters into his own hands. He didn’t though, and kept feeding Durant, and Durant rewarded the team by icing the game with a jumper over Andre Igoudala with 30 seconds left.

The Warriors are still favourites to win the series, and rightfully so. Their 73 wins builds up a certain equity that isn’t lost with a single home defeat to open a series. But there remain question marks, with Andrew Bogut hobbled and Curry not looking entirely back to his best. Before Durant killed the game off, Curry had taken just two of Golden State’s preceding ten shots. That’s either too passive, or too restricted.

The Warriors were off all second half, especially lazy on offence, jacking far too many quick shots and carelessly turning the ball over. They’ll be better, but, worryingly for them, so might Durant and Westbrook, who combined to shoot just 17 for 51.

Westbrook though, perhaps more than any other player, is not done justice by the box-score, for better or worse. The bizarre, disinterested pick and roll defence at times doesn’t show up, but often the manic energy and violent relentless can’t be quantified either.

Golden State looked to be pulling away with game one in the third quarter and then Westbrook said “No.” He started rocketing to the rim and hitting outrageous three-pointers. It didn’t really make sense, but it never does with him.

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I’m not sure I’d want to play basketball with Russell Westbrook. But I’m sure as hell certain that I wouldn’t want to play against him.

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