The Golden State Warriors owned the Oklahoma City Thunder last season. The Dubs went 4-0 against Kevin Durant‘s old team, and the closest margin of victory in any of those games was 16 points. Whenever the two teams took the floor, Golden State seemed like it wanted to send a message to the Thunder and their fans in the aftermath of Durant’s departure from the franchise.
It almost begs the question of how the Warriors found it so easy to stop a team that won 47 games last season and had the league MVP. As it turns out, the fact that the Thunder had Russell Westbrook was what made it so easy.
Zach Lowe of ESPN was discussing Jack McCallum’s new book, Golden Days: West’s Lakers, Steph’s Warriors, and the California Dreamers Who Reinvented Basketball, on the latest episode of “The Lowe Post.” He mentioned that McCallum raised a point about the Warriors and the Thunder that he had heard as well.
“Jack McCallum’s new book about the Warriors … has a bunch of anonymous Warriors talking about Russ and how they don’t fear Russ,” Lowe said. “How KD left partly because of Russ. How Russ’ style of play is so easy for them to defend it’s like cake to them.”
Ryen Russillo, who joined Lowe on the episode of the podcast, responded to this by saying, “Think how easy that would be, you have to worry about one guy.” Lowe then came back and confirmed that everything in McCallum’s book sums up what the Warriors say about Westbrook.
When you have as many really good-to-elite perimeter defenders as the Warriors do, slowing down a guy like Westbrook isn’t as challenging, especially when there’s no one else who can really punish you for focusing all of your attention on one guy. The Thunder made it a point to make sure that doesn’t happen again this season by going out and acquiring Paul George and Carmelo Anthony.
It’ll be interesting to see if the Dubs still find it easy to slow down Westbrook when he’s surrounded by elite running mates, or if they think they have a plan to keep him contained no matter who his teammates are.
(Via The Lowe Post)
