KD’s last-second 3, Westbrook’s triple-double lead OKC past Magic
You’ve got to be special to be what people talk about after your teammate puts up 24 points, 19 rebounds, 14 assists and two steals with two turnovers in 38 minutes. But then, Kevin Durant is pretty damn special.
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A high-octane nip-and-tuck Wednesday night battle between the Oklahoma City Thunder and Orlando Magic — two teams with a recent history of epic clashing — came down to the final half-minute. After Russell Westbrook sprinted through the Orlando defense for a layup that knotted the game (for the 18th time) at 114, the Magic had a chance to regain the lead, and put the ball in the hands of Victor Oladipo, who had torched the OKC D all night for a season-high 37 points.
Orlando worked a switch up top, giving Oladipo what he felt was a favorable matchup with Thunder power forward Serge Ibaka; he felt wrong, as the elite interior defender tracked him step for step and swatted Oladipo’s layup over to Dion Waiters. The Thunder had possession with 10 seconds left and a chance to draw up a final play … only head coach Billy Donovan told his charges to just go, putting the onus on Durant to attack a defense scrambling in retreat and send the Chesapeake Energy Arena fans home happy.
Like I said: Durant’s pretty damn special.
KD hit backpedaling Magic forward Tobias Harris with an evil left-to-right crossover to create space — “Been working on that since I was 6 years old,” he’d say after the game — before raising up from 27 feet out. Splash. Thunder lead, 117-114, with five-tenths of a second to go, and after a last-ditch look from Oladipo came up short, Oklahoma City headed home with a three-point win.
“Well, that was all created by the great defense by Serge, blocking Oladipo’s shot, and my teammates trust me in that situation,” Durant told FOX Sports Oklahoma’s Lesley McCaslin after the game. “I try to come through. Like I’ve said, that’s the most carefree time of the game for me. I just let it go and it went in.”
After hitting the showers, Durant credited Donovan for having enough trust to let his players go on their own on the final possession instead of taking a timeout that could wind up doing more harm than good. From Royce Young of Daily Thunder:
“I just feel like it’s easier for a team to put in their best defenders or set up a play defensively, a scheme to stop you,” Durant said. “And at the end of the day, most of the time you’re going to shoot that type of shot anyway. The shot I took is what you’re really gonna get after a timeout anyway. Ten seconds to go, coach would’ve just given me the ball and I would’ve dribbled the clock down and tried to get a shot. Without having to set up or give them any time to think about the play, it kind of caught them off guard and off balance a little bit once we went ahead and just got the points at the end.”
It was Durant’s seventh career go-ahead 3-pointer in the final five seconds of the fourth quarter or overtime, most in the league since he entered it, and it capped another brilliant performance in which the former NBA Most Valuable Player poured in 37 points on 12-for-25 shooting, including a season-high six 3-pointers in 12 tries, to go with five rebounds, five assists, three blocks and two steals:
But while Durant’s last-second heroics won the day, it’s arguable that, to a greater degree, Westbrook’s performance — again, 24 points, 19 rebounds, 14 assists, Russ’ third straight triple-double, his eighth of the season and the first line of its kind since Larry Bird nearly 35 years ago — won Oklahoma City the game:
Westbrook said after the game that his career-best rebounding effort came after Donovan told him he “needed to help the guys on the boards tonight” against an active Magic frontcourt. That Westbrook managed to execute that directive while still making sure everyone ate on offense and that he could still get his own shots serves as a testament to how potent and pivotal an all-around force the All-Star point guard is right now, according to Donovan:
Billy Donovan on Russell Westbrook: pic.twitter.com/BjqjP9LPC4
— Royce Young (@royceyoung) February 4, 2016
With Durant scorching the nets, Westbrook doing a little a lot of everything and the big-man rotation of Ibaka, Steven Adams and Enes Kanter all contributing, Oklahoma City found enough firepower to withstand a shaky defensive performance. Oladipo’s 13-for-19 outing paced a Magic team that entered Wednesday ranked 25th among 30 NBA teams in offensive efficiency — and that has been even worse of late, averaging just 97.4 points per 100 possessions since Jan. 1, the NBA’s third-worst mark in 2016 — but that still managed to shoot 49.5 percent from the field as a collective and make 10 of 23 3-point shots.
It made for a fantastically entertaining game and a super-enjoyable sequel to their October double-overtime thriller, but it also left you wondering: If Oladipo, Mario Hezonja and the sputtering Magic can roast the Thunder defense for the better part of four quarters, then what the heck will Stephen Curry, fresh off a 51-point explosion, and the 45-4 Golden State Warriors do to it when the two Western titans square off on Saturday? Between you and me, I’m kind of hoping the Dubs bring out the flamethrowers, if for no other reason than I’d really like to watch KD and Russ bust out theirs, too; as Wednesday night reminded us, when they crank up the heat, there aren’t too many opponents in the league that can handle it.
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Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
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