No. 1: KD back to OKC? More A-OK than S.O.S. — “Primal scream therapy” was what our man Fran Blinebury labeled it, and he was spot on his report on Kevin Durant’s return to Oklahoma City to face the Thunder Saturday night. More
OKLAHOMA CITY — LeBron James, Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love were all in the starting lineup for Thursday night’s game against the Oklahoma City Thunder, less than 24 hours after Cleveland Cavaliers coach Tyronn Lue said the team’s Big 3 would “probably” all rest. More
IT’S BEEN SEVEN months and six days since Kevin Durant made his decision. More
CLEVELAND (AP) — Kyrie Irving scored 29 points, LeBron James had 25 and 14 rebounds and the Cleveland Cavaliers played one of their better all-around games in weeks, beating Russell Westbrook and the Oklahoma City Thunder 107-91 on Sunday. More
OKLAHOMA CITY — It can easily be said that this year is all about the triple-double for Russell Westbrook. Every night the Oklahoma City point guard takes the court, the league is on triple-double alert. More
Ethan Skolnick’s Power Rankings (12/19)
Russell Westbrook and James Harden both signed contract extensions last summer, and they could do it again next July. Under the new collective bargaining agreement, the Oklahoma City Thunder and Houston Rockets superstars will be grandfathered into eligibility for the “super-max” contracts that will be available with the new designated player veteran exception, via The Vertical’s Adrian Wojnarowski: More
Russell Westbrook all but averages a triple-double with a league-high 31.8 points per game to go with his 10.6 assists and 9.6 rebounds a night. The 28-year-old point guard has been an All-NBA lock when healthy since his third year in the league and All-Star Game MVP each of the past two seasons.
Westbrook does not, however, have an All-Defensive honor bearing his name. Some have posited that Westbrook fails to match his extraordinary offensive exertion on the defensive end, even questioning whether his penchant for statistics, namely steals or rebounds, takes priority over winning basketball.
True or not, Westbrook will not be submitting his defensive effort on the final play of Tuesday night’s game against the Los Angeles Lakers — a sequence that saw Nick Young steal a pass from his own teammate and mend a broken relationship with another all in one game-winning swoop — to the academy for Defensive Player of the Year consideration this season. And neither will his teammates.
In what could be interpreted as a not-so-subtle shot at his backcourt mate, fellow Oklahoma City Thunder guard Victor Oladipo expressed his frustration over having to hedge on Brandon Ingram and chase down a wide-open Young when he began the last-second inbounds play guarding Lou Williams.
“It was a little confusing. It seemed like I was guarding three people at one time, but it is what it is — you know what I mean? He kind of came out of nowhere. It looked like it was going back to Lou [Williams]; he kind of came out of nowhere, grabbed it and shot it. Made a big…
