Russell Westbrook's failed 4th quarter takeover was the Thunder's own decision

Westbrook shot 4-of-18 in the fourth, but in a sense, he had to play that way.takes

You can already see the headlines and the talk shows and the radio topics and the Twitter takes coming for Westbrook. The next 24 hours will be filled with, why didn’t he pass more? Is he selfish? Does he only care about his own stats?

While James Harden trusted his teammates to score down the stretch, Russell Westbrook did not. Since Westbrook shot 4-of-18 in the fourth quarter, the loss will be blamed on him. It’s a fair point, because if you miss 14 shots in the final quarter, you deserve blame. But it’s also not quite that simple.

Consider the end of the third quarter. When Westbrook went to the bench up 86-74 with two minutes left in the third quarter, the Rockets immediately closed the quarter on a 12-3 run. Consider the lineup he finished much of the fourth quarter with: Steven Adams, Victor Oladipo, Andre Roberson, and Jerami Grant. Would you trust any of them with an open three? Roberson and Oladipo each missed wide open ones in the final five minutes.

Westbrook played a bad fourth quarter and settled for terrible shots as the clock winded down, and nobody can deny that. It’s incredible that a 51-point triple-double can be considered a bad game at this point, but anyone who takes 43 shots opens themselves up for this type of criticism. There will be a lot of takes over the next 24 hours about whether Westbrook was right, wrong, selfish, terrible, or only playing this game for himself. It’s also important to realize: to an extent, this is what the Thunder wanted.

Thunder head coach Billy Donovan could have opted for a more offensive-friendly approach, with Taj Gibson or Doug McDermott or Kyle Singler playing more minutes. But Oklahoma City knew that trying to outscore the Rockets, who had a historic offense this season, would never work. They chose to focus on defense, give Westbrook the ball, and hoped his brilliance could outplay everything

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Warriors take 2-0 series lead on Blazers, win without Durant

OAKLAND, Calif. — JaVale McGee has made a name for himself catching lob passes and reliably slamming them home to the pure delight of his teammates, and oh did those matter for the short-handed Golden State Warriors as they moved one win closer to another NBA championship.

The typically spot-on Splash Brothers weren’t hitting consistently. Kevin Durant wasn’t on the court at all, nor Shaun Livingston.

McGee shined on a night none of the usual stars found their steady shooting strokes and sparked Golden State off the bench with 15 points, and the Warriors beat the Portland Trail Blazers 110-81 in Game 2 of their first-round playoff series Wednesday night as Durant sat out injured.

"That’s my whole thing, I just try to be efficient out there," McGee said.

The backup big man made all seven of his field-goal attempts and delivered several more of his signature alley-oop dunks as Durant watched with a strained left calf he hurt in the playoff opener Sunday.

No one player can replace KD, so they all did collectively.

The Golden State Warriors didn’t replace Kevin Durant when he missed Game 2 against the Portland Trail Blazers on Wednesday. They didn’t need to. Instead of assigning him impact to a player, they chopped it up, passed it around and ended up with a dominant 30-point win without a single player even scoring 20 points.

Durant isn’t gone long — he could have played, but is sitting on the side of caution with a strained left calf. Of course, Durant was out for more than a month during the regular season, only returning with three games left on the schedule. To make certain he’s healthy, Golden State doesn’t need to risk playing him in the first round that they believed they could win handily without him. As it turned out, they could.

The high scorer in the 110-81 win was Stephen Curry, who scored 19 points on mediocre shooting — 6-of-18 from the field — but was a team best plus-32 during his time on the court. Other contributions came from all other: Klay Thompson with 16; JaVale McGee with 15 on 7-of-7 shooting; Andre Iguodala with six, but 10 rebounds and six assists; Draymond Green with six points, 12 rebounds, 10 assists and three blocks; and Ian Clark dropping 13. Read More Here

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The GS Warriors Win and The OKC Thunder Lose. Full report and Videos Inside!

Russell Westbrook's failed 4th quarter takeover was the Thunder's own decision

Westbrook shot 4-of-18 in the fourth, but in a sense, he had to play that way.takes

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