All- Star awkwardness hits new heights
Westbrook will team with Durant, Warriors
Picture yourself at a five- star restaurant, the kind where reservations are hard to come by on any night but especially when it’s a special holiday. Then, amid the bliss and buildup, this sordid sequence of events unfolds: Your better half can’t make it, and somehow you wind up at a table with your ex — and his or her friends — not long after you both endured the most bitter of breakups.
That’s what Russell Westbrook is facing this weekend, when the Oklahoma City Thunder star will be sharing locker rooms, social scenes, minutes and — if the fans have their way — even court time with the bevy of Golden State Warriors who will surround him. As if it’s not enough that Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, Draymond Green and former Thunder teammate Kevin Durant will make up a third of the Western Conference’s roster and Warriors coach Steve Kerr will be calling the shots, Westbrook has had less than a week to recover from the reunion game.
Saturday at Chesapeake Energy Are- na, where Durant was booed mercilessly amid chants of “Cupcake” in his first return to the place where he played for eight seasons, Westbrook and Durant did nothing to quell this storm. There was trash- talking between the two and another dust- up between Durant and former teammate Andre Roberson. A few minutes into the first quarter of the Warriors’ 130- 114 win, Westbrook told official Marc Davis that Green was hurling expletives his way.
Afterward, as the Warriors headed for the exits with a noticeable decline in political correctness, Green conducted his postgame interview in one of the Westbrook- inspired “Cupcake” T- shirts that so many fans had worn that night, the attire serving as a way of calling Durant soft for leaving town. The back story involved Westbrook posting a picture of cupcakes on Instagram not long after Durant’s decision as a way of expressing what he thought of it.
All of which raises a fair question as we head into All- Star weekend: Are the Warriors, after all these Westbrook- involved subplots, upset with the way he handled Durant’s exit?
“I think he’s been great ( this season),” Green said in a matter- of- fact tone. “He’s played his ass off all year.”