Thunder vs.Bucks
There’s only one takeaway from this game really for me that I want to talk about. Russell Westbrook is back.
I’m petty hard on Westbrook mostly for how much I love Kevin Durant. Everything Durant does just makes Westbrook look bad. Think about it. Durant is all finesse, Westbrook all anger, and aggression. Durant is infinitely efficient, Westbrook not so much. This makes it seem that Westbrook isn’t good, which isn’t true. Westbrook isn’t amazing. Maybe we’re all spoiled with how Pippen and Jordan played together. Pippen would fill in all of the blanks Jordan couldn’t, they were perfect together. Westbrook and Durant just aren’t the same way.
That’s mostly rambling though. My point is that Westbrook is back. I didn’t think he could come back this quickly. Knee injuries in basketball aren’t exactly patch em up and put em back out situations. Everyone chronicled Derrick Rose last year and while Westbrook’s injury wasn’t as severe as Derrick Rose’s (meniscus tear vs. acl tear), it’s still a scary injury to come back from. Particularly with Westbrook’s style. His most used move is to use his speed to get ahead of his defender stop on a dime as the defender back pedals away from him and shoot 15 footer. Whether it goes in early will show how devastating Russ will be any given night game 4 vs. the Heat in the finals 2 years ago when Westbrook went bonkers that shot swished all night long) But the whole stopping on the dime thing hinges on your knees being able to do so. Westbrook has show since he came back that he can do that, and tonight it was like nothing had changed. At one point in the third, Westbrook slashed through the lane with the ball, stopped, hopped to the right took contact and made the shot from 6 feet out. It was vintage Westbrook.
The Thunder are right back at being Contenders in the West.
E-mail: seamusfennll@gmail.com
Twitter: @Kevin_Seamus
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