DURANT’S FRUSTRATING NIGHT GIVES MAVS LIFE,
Durant’s frustrating night gives life to Mavericks
On the bench, the Thunder kept encouraging Kevin Durant. Keep your head up. Keep attacking. Keep shooting.
On the court, Russell Westbrook kept feeding Durant. Pass after pass. Sometimes desperately. Anything to get Durant the ball. You can’t score without the ball.
But on this night, Durant was hard-pressed to score with the ball.
The Zombie Mavericks stunned the Thunder 85-84 Monday night, courtesy of the worst playoff performance in Durant’s career. Durant had more turnovers (seven) than field goals (six). He took 33 shots. Durant’s career high is 34; he’s launched that many just twice. Durant had 26 misses. The most of his career, regular season or not.
Durant’s frustration mounted deep into the game and was displayed not by emotion but by Durant’s quick trigger.
Durant listened to Billy Donovan and those guys on the bench. He kept shooting. And shooting. And shooting. Seven shots in the final 5:10 of the game. He made just one, a desperation 3-pointer with 9.5 seconds left that at least gave the Thunder life.
The truth is, there’s not really such a thing as a bad Kevin Durant shot. But those limits were tested Monday night. With Wesley Matthews draped all over Durant much of the game, Durant’s normally efficient shots were rushed and hurried and errant.
“With any good player, you just try to make it tough,” said Dallas star Dirk Nowitzki. “Not one guy’s going to stop him. Try to mix up coverages. Try to make every catch difficult. What they do to me. Nothing easy.”
Durant missed 18 of his final 21 shots, including a hurried drive with two seconds left, and when Westbrook’s tip bounced off and Steven Adams’ putback was a fraction too late, a Maverick team old and slow and injured stole a win that makes this first-round Western Conference mismatch at least interesting.
“Bad shooting night for me,” Durant said. “That’s part of it. Wished it hadn’t happened tonight. No excuse. I just gotta make ‘em next time.”
That probably won’t be an issue. Durant has a clunker like this about once every 200 games. There was a 3 of 20 night in November 2009 against Portland. A 3 of 16 game against Golden State in January 2015. A 3 of 14 night against Phoenix in March 2011. A 5 of 23 disaster in Game 6 against the Lakers in the 2010 first round, a game that sent Durant into a long offseason.
Those were the only games of his post-Seattle career worse than the 7 of 33 (21.2 percent) debacle against Dallas.
“Playoff games frequently are not the prettiest to watch,” said wily Maverick coach Rick Carlisle, who mixed in a little zone, but nothing too severe, to bother Durant. “There’s so much passion. There’s so much raw effort. Teams become more familiar with each other. You just get a lot of physical play and you get a lot of highly-contested shots.”
The trouble was, it’s not like the rest of the Thunder was shackled. OKC’s non-superstars shot 43 percent from the field. Serge Ibaka got just seven shots but made four; he was 2 of 4 from 3-point range. Adams was 4 of 6. Waiters 3 of 8.
Yet the deeper the game went, the more the Thunder relied solely on Durant and Westbrook. In the final 6:45 of the game, the Thunder took 16 shots; 13 of them came from the two superstars, and of the three that weren’t, two were follow shots by Adams or Enes Kanter.
The Thunder resorted to mostly a two-man game, with disastrous results. All the optimism built around the Game 1 blowout of Dallas was replaced by the pessimism that the Thunder can’t sustain consistency, which is absolutely paramount after OKC dispatches of these game but flawed Mavs.
“He’s the best player in the world,” Westbrook said of his running buddy. “My job is to find him easy baskets. I’ve been with him too long. I know, that won’t happen again.”
But it happened Monday night, giving the Mavericks life.