Thunder rumbles with Grizzlies
Russell Westbrook and the rest of the team tamed the Memphis team, 114-102.
From 25 feet away, Russell Westbrook stared down the rim.
The Thunder’s game against the Grizzlies Friday at Chesapeake Energy Arena had ticked into the final two minutes, and momentum was up for grabs. Westbrook wanted it. He took aim, and it was true. For good measure, he did it again a trip later — from a foot closer in, the same result.
They were dagger 3-pointers, staking his team to leads of three and six points in the home stretch of a 114-102 win against the Grizzlies on Friday. And maybe they weren’t even the highlight of Westbrook’s closing act.
Maybe that was the pass he picked off after those triples, the remarkable read he made to intercept the ball near halfcourt. He missed the ensuing layup — “Wish I would have finished it,” Westbrook said — but a pair of free throws put OKC in front 110102 with 52.5 seconds to play.
“My closeout speed is not bad,” Westbrook said.
All over the floor on Friday he showed that he knows how to close.
Westbrook scored 19 points in the fourth quarter, including the Thunder’s final 15. He engineered a 21-4 run that put away the Grizzlies and put to bed a three-game Thunder losing streak. He finished with 38 points, 13 rebounds and 12 assists, his 25th triple-double of the season.
And those numbers,
Billy Donovan insisted, weren’t the story.
In the Thunder coach’s estimation, they rarely are.
“They write so much about his triple-doubles, his numbers, his stats, his minutes, his usage and all that other stuff,” Donovan said. “And I really think people miss it. They really, really miss it. Those things are remarkable and they’re incredible and I’m not undervaluing what he’s done statistically. But it’s the constant awareness of what’s going on in the game.”
Donovan cited the pass Westbrook picked off as a perfect example — a steal in the boxscore, but something more on the court.
He makes those plays with some regularity. Rarely are they larger than in the fourth quarter on Friday, in a game the Thunder was hungry to win.
Oklahoma City entered off three straight losses and an embarrassing performance on Wednesday, a 28-point home loss to Chicago. It hadn’t won a game since backup center Enes Kanter broke a bone in his right forearm punching a chair in frustration, and the Thunder’s offense had gone south since he’d gone down.
Memphis entered Friday having made 48.8 percent from 3-point range in its three previous games, making 13.7 of them per game in that stretch. But the Grizzlies made 1 of 9 first-half 3-pointers and shot 40.4 percent from the floor overall before halftime.
And the Thunder, which entered the game having made 17.1 percent of its first-half 3-pointers in its past three game, made 6 of 13 in the first half.
That turned in the third quarter, when Memphis made 12 of its 15 shots and 2 of 4 treys. As the Grizzlies caught fire, the Thunder went cold. OKC made 7 of 18 third-quarter shots and turned the ball over eight times in the quarter, leading to 11 Memphis points.
That set up a fourth quarter that the Grizzlies controlled early as the Thunder sought a spark.
At both ends, Westbrook furnished an inferno.
“There’s a lot of things that he does in my opinion that don’t show up in the stat sheet,” Donovan said. “And I get that the stats are remarkable, but there’s so much more to him as a leader and as a player, in my opinion.”