Kevin Durant dominates, scores game-high 39 as Warriors rout Thunder
In NBA A to Z Diaries, Insiders Sam Amick and Jeff Zillgitt will provide insight, analysis and revelations from around the league in a free-flowing attempt to make sense of this 2016-17 season. Here, we take a look at the highly-anticipated reunion game between the Golden State Warriors’ Kevin Durant and his old Oklahoma City Thunder squad.
OAKLAND – What if Jerami Grant had just walked away?
Three minutes left in the first quarter at Oracle Arena, and the Thunder’s 22-year-old forward posterizes Kevin Durant on this Thursday night so full of history and hubris. He bumps the former MVP on purpose. Then, in a curious move if ever there was one, Grant stares him down as the Thunder take a 10-point lead.
Mount Durant, not to be confused with nearby Mount Diablo in his new home here in the San Francisco Bay, erupts.
Back-to-back midrange jumpers. A three-pointer near the end of the quarter over former teammate Enes Kanter. The emotions that Durant admitted would be there in his first game against the team with which he played for eight years change, it seems, from sentimental to seething.
It’s video game type domination from there, a 24-5 run with offense flowing like lava and Durant playing with the same cheat code that his new teammate/fellow former MVP, Stephen Curry, so often uses in this building. Even the unrelenting Russell Westbrook has to succumb, Durant’s former co-star seeing his team fall behind while he took a short breather on the bench only to have it all unravel from there.
A few hours later, as Durant finishes with 39 points after scoring 29 in the first half and hits seven of 11 threes in all, they’re chanting “KD!” as the Thunder (4-1) suffer their first loss and the Warriors – 122-96 victors – head for the Super Team runway.
They’re flying now.
After getting smoked by the San Antonio Spurs in the season opener and looking very average in wins against New Orleans and Phoenix, the Warriors routed Portland and Oklahoma City in the kind of way that we expected coming into this Durant-centric season. But this night wasn’t just about that, of course. This was about Durant and Westbrook sharing a floor again in the strangest of ways.
Durant had tried his best in recent days to downplay the soap opera aspect of this matchup, deeming some of the media discussion about his relationship with Westbrook “messy.” And then there was Westbrook, stoking those fires right from the start with a pregame outfit for the ages.
This wasn’t just any bright orange pinny with “Official Photographer” written on the front and back. This was widely seen as a “shots fired” NBA moment if ever there was one, a clear reference to Durant’s widely-known hobby as a photographer that Westbrook had playfully mocked back when they were still wearing the same jersey. Westbrook wouldn’t cop to it, of course, saying there was “no story behind it.” Pigs flew soon thereafter …
There was a slice of civility, though, as Marcus Thompson of The Bay Area News Group reported that Durant and Westbrook shared chapel together before the tip. And while they didn’t have any sort of greeting on the floor before the action finally started, both players had made it clear coming in that they simply didn’t make a habit of such a thing.
There was no postgame interaction to be had, either, as Westbrook – white towel draped over his shoulders after he finished with 20 points (just four of 15 shooting), 10 assists and six rebounds – walked straight for the hallway heading to the visitor’s locker room without so much as a glance Durant’s way. These two teams play again at Oracle Arena on Jan. 18, then face off for the first time in Oklahoma City on Feb. 11.
Maybe Grant will learn to walk away from Durant by then.
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