Not much of a rivalry
How the Thunder-Warriors series shifted before Durant’s departure
Following the Thunder’s most exciting game of the season, a game in which Russell Westbrook and Co. received a standing ovation after a 16-point loss to Golden State, he was in no mood to talk rivalry.
In fact, he didn’t consider it a rivalry at all. Why?
“Because I don’t,” Westbrook said flatly, the Thunder losers of six consecutive regularseason games against the Warriors.
Westbrook’s right.
Despite the Westbrook vs. Kevin Durant storyline, Zaza Pachulia’s posturing, and a seven-game slugfest in last season’s playoffs, the definition of a rivalry wouldn’t apply to Thunder-Warriors as they prepare to clash Monday for the final time this regular season.
That definition started to dissipate even before Durant bolted for the Bay Area. Outside of the Thunder pressing Golden State in the Western Conference finals last season, the matchup has been in favor of the Warriors the past three regular seasons.
The shots(s)
In a span of two weeks, Andre Iguodala and Westbrook traded game-winning jump shots. Iguodala’s fadeaway buzzer-beater in Oakland on Nov. 14, 2013, erased a Westbrook’s goahead 3-pointer with 2.3 seconds left in a 115-114 Golden State victory.
On Nov. 29, in Oklahoma City, Westbrook sank an even more improbable shot — a corner 3-pointer with 0.1 second left after Thabo Sefolosha saved the ball from going out of bounds in a 113-112 overtime win at Chesapeake Energy Arena.
From the team’s arrival in Oklahoma City in 2008 until the start of the 201314 season, the Thunder went 13-5 against the Warriors, including wins in seven of eight meetings. A four-game cluster in the 2012-13 season saw the Thunder win three games against Golden State by an average of 16.2 points per game.
The Thunder has won just two of 11 regular-season meetings between the teams since. One of those wins came during the same season as the Iguodala-Westbrook thrillers — a herculean 54-point game from Durant with Westbrook sidelined.
That was the last time the Thunder played Golden State without Draymond Green as a starter.
The switch
Steven Adams was just a second-year player. He couldn’t recall what changes Green brought to the Warriors’ starting lineup back in 2014, but he knows what Green does now.
“He’s an aggressive player,” said Adams, likening Green to Memphis guard Tony Allen. “A guy who really impacts the game, but it doesn’t have to be scoring.”
Green — a secondround pick — was inserted as the starter at power forward when David Lee kept getting hurt in preseason. The move changed a franchise, Green solidifying the small-ball starting lineup as an upgrade to the defensively-challenged Lee.
In the teams’ first meeting of 2013-14, the Thunder was in the midst of its worst injury bug in team history. Westbrook and Durant didn’t play. But Green helped keep Serge Ibaka to 5-of-17 shooting in a 91-85 Warriors win. Ibaka had given Lee fits in the past.
“Everything within his role he does at a very high level,” Adams said of Green. “He affects the game as much as anyone else on the court.”
The shift
By the time they met again, the Warriors were 22-4. And? The Thunder had a scorching Durant, who shot out to 30 points in the first half … before spraining his ankle in the second quarter. The Warriors won by five again.
Those Thunder wins began to tilt. The Warriors began winning the shootouts.
The Thunder won its early meetings with the Stephen Curry-led Warriors playing breakneck, high scoring games despite trotting out lineups with big men such as Kendrick Perkins, a younger iteration of Ibaka, and later Adams. The Thunder won playing the Warriors’ style.
“It was a great game for the fans,” then-Thunder coach Scott Brooks said in 2012, after a 119-116 Thunder win over the Warriors. “It’s not the way that we anticipated it going into the game. But sometimes you have to win different ways.”
In those first 18 meetings against the Warriors after the Thunder’s move to Oklahoma City, the Thunder averaged 106.3 points per game and went 13-5, this despite Golden State outscoring OKC 1,916 to 1,913.
In the next 10 games before Durant’s departure, Golden State outscored Oklahoma City 1,144 to 1,100. The Thunder ratcheted its scoring up to 110.0 points per game against the Warriors. Golden State simply increased its scoring to 114.4.
The dagger came in the Thunder’s epic 121118 overtime loss last season, with Curry’s 37-foot clincher perhaps planting a seed of doubt in Durant’s mind as he watched from the bench, having fouled out.
The Thunder continues to challenge, chasing the No. 4 seed in the Western Conference a year after losing a franchise centerpiece, a remarkable feat. Golden State continues a march toward a second title in three seasons. The Thunder-Warriors gap widened with Durant’s departure, and will remain Monday, even with the former Thunder forward sidelined with a knee sprain.
Merriam-Webster defines a rivalry as “a state or situation in which people or groups are competing with each other.” The key word is “competing.”
No matter how Westbrook views Thunder vs. Warriors, OKC and the rest of the Western Conference are fighting to give that definition relevance again.
“It was a great game for the fans. It’s not the way that we anticipated it going into the game. But sometimes you have to win different ways.” Former Thunder coach Scott Brooks, on OKC’s 2012 win vs. the Warriors