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The Thunder paid tribute to Kobe the right way: by destroying him

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The Thunder paid tribute to Kobe the right way: by destroying him

Before Kobe Bryant’s final visit to Oklahoma, and the final road game of his illustrious 20-year career, the Oklahoma City Thunder came in peace, bearing gifts. After tip-off, though, they paid the Los Angeles Lakers legend the most fitting tribute they could: they came for blood, and showed no mercy.

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Monday evening began with Kevin Durant (long a Kobe fan, friend, booster, supporter and defender) and Russell Westbrook (a favorite of Bryant’s since he was 16 years old) honoring their Olympic teammate, mentor, foe and attempted divider with a neat parting gift:

The book featured handwritten notes written by each Thunder player “detailing what Bryant meant to them,” according to ESPN.com’s Royce Young — a warmhearted gesture that paired well with the pre-game video presentation Oklahoma City produced that was narrated by the future Hall of Famer’s coach at Lower Merion High School, Gregg Downer:

Thunder superfan Garrett Haviland — a.k.a. “Thundor,” the luchador-masked partisan who bares his belly and booms boos at opposing free throw shooters through a megaphone — offered a decidedly different, but perhaps equally sweet, artistic salute to the third-leading scorer in NBA history:

Surely inspired and emboldened by the painted-stomach paean, Kobe came out of the gate ready to fire away and get buckets, scoring 13 points on 4-for-10 shooting in the opening frame to help the Lakers stay within hailing distance of OKC, 27-21, after 12 minutes. But a Thunder offense that missed 16 of 25 shots in the first quarter got cranked up in the second, and kept the pedal to the metal in the third, and that was all she wrote for a Lakers club that, with precious few exceptions this season, has just been outgunned and out of gas.

Westbrook needed less than two quarters — just 17 minutes and 46 seconds of floor time — to notch his 18th triple-double of the season, the most in the NBA this year and the most in any single season since at least 1983-84. (That’s the second-fastest triple-double in league history, FYI.)

The performance — which ended with final totals of 13 points, 14 assists, 10 rebounnds and one steal in 27 1/2 minutes in Oklahoma City’s 112-79 pasting of the Lakers — added yet another data point to the case for the point guard’s status as “the most impressive triple-double machine in recorded NBA history,” and drew raves from Bryant after the game, according to Bill Oram of the Orange County Register:

“That’s pretty outrageous, what he’s been able to do all year long,” Kobe Bryant said. “It seems to fly underneath the radar because of what Steph (Curry) is doing up there in Golden State and what they’re doing as a team, but he’s having a historical season himself.” […]

“I didn’t smile on the court much either,” Bryant said. “But he plays the game with such an energy and with such an aggressiveness. I think it needs to be appreciated. It needs to be appreciated.

“He’s not out there trying to be cute with the basketball.”

He certainly didn’t need on Monday — not when he could just cut the Lakers’ woeful defense to ribbons, and not when Durant was more than happy to make the destruction of the opposition look so pretty.

Durant scored a game-high 34 points on 11-for-18 shooting in 27 minutes, with 16 coming in a third quarter that saw OKC’s lead balloon to 31 points, ensuring that neither the Thunder’s starters nor Bryant needed to see the floor in the fourth quarter.

After the game, Durant — who has spoken frequently and at length about how Bryant’s famed work ethic has inspired him, and who earned laughs and some arched eyebrows earlier this week upon the release of a Nike-produced celebratory Kobe video in which he said Bryant “pissed me off a lot” and even called him a, um, sphincter — described his annihilation of the moribund Lakers and his insistence on going right at Kobe as a gesture of appreciation as sincere and heartfelt as the scrapbook, according to Young:

“I remember when Michael Jordan was on his way out, and Kobe didn’t take it easy on him, and that’s all I was thinking,” Durant said. “I was just trying to destroy him every chance I got and send him off right. Every time I got the ball, he was like, ‘Come on, let’s see what you got,’ and that shows the type of player, the type of person, the type of competitor he is, and it was fun to play against him one last time.”

After the destruction had ceased and the final buzzer had sounded, with the Thunder one game closer to opening the 2016 playoffs as the West’s No. 3 seed and the Lakers one game away from the end of the era that has defined them for two decades, all that was left was the love:

… which, all things considered, is a pretty good place to end.

More NBA coverage:

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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!

Stay connected with Ball Don’t Lie on Twitter @YahooBDL, “Like” BDL on Facebook and follow Dunks Don’t Lie on Tumblr for year-round NBA talk, jokes and more.

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