That ending!
I’m still in shock. I haven’t experienced anything as spine-tingling as that since the conclusion of Rosemary’s Baby!!!
30 seconds left in overtime, game tied at 118, Kevin Durant, who was superfluous before fouling out with 37 points and 12 rebounds could only watch as the ball was in the hands of perhaps the greatest shooter (though Larry Bird, Jerry West and Chris Mullin might have something to say about that) that the NBA has ever seen.
(Now before we start prematurely calling him the game’s greatest scorer ever, we might want to wait a few years to see how his resume eventually stacks up with the likes of my man George Gervin, MJ, Kobe, Kareem, KD, Allen Iverson, Rick Barry, The Logo, The Big O and the most inexorable offensive force the game has ever seen, Wilt Chamberlain. But it’s cute that the young bucks and uninformed are already convinced of it, but I digress.)
Russell Westbrook played an outstanding game with 26 points and 13 assists. He pumped in 11 of OKC’s 15 points in overtime with Durant having fouled out, but his brain flatulence and hack that resulted in Klay Thompson’s and-one allowed the Warriors to tie it up.
The Thunder seemed to have cracked the code to make the Warriors look mortal, until Steph Curry proved, once again, that he’s already among the game’s immortals.
We’re running out of superlatives for a guy who became the first player to ever hit 10 three-pointers in consecutive games, let alone the first to ever hit 10 from deep more than once in a season.
And words can do no justice in describing the degree of difficulty of the shots that he splashed from long-range.
The only things that I could imagine being more difficult is having a wonderful experience flying Spirit Airlines, removing Mo’nique’s calf hair with your teeth, winning the Tour de France without P.E.D.’s, or being a cat who came of age in the ’80s and ’90s NYC Hip Hop culture and watching that monstrosity of excrement from VH-1 called The Breaks, without wanting to throw your damn TV out of the window!
With the rest of his Warriors teammates floundering, Curry put on a performance for the ages that culminated in his game-winning three-pointer from close to 40 feet away. On top of it being one of the most incredible regular season games I’ve ever seen and Curry’s miraculous shooting in his 46-point outburst, lost in the sauce of the matchup was that this was Golden State’s sixth game in nine days on a bi-coastal road trip.
I literally do not have to watch another NBA game this year until the playoffs, because my appetite has been satiated.
Ever since Saturday night, I’ve been trying to think of any other regular season games that delivered in the same fashion as the Warriors vs the Thunder. The only ones I can think of are:
Pistons vs Nuggets, 1983 – These jokers scored a combined 370 points in the Pistons 186-184 triple-overtime win. Before the Pistons became the Bad Boys, Isiah and company could run-and-gun with the best of them. And those Doug Moe-coached Denver squads would run you down into the ground like Jessica Huang in Fresh Off The Boat. 1
2 players scored in double-figures, led by Isiah Thomas’ 47 points for Detroit and Kiki Vandeweghe’s 51 for Denver. Peep the box scores.
Raptors vs Lakers, 2006 – Kobe dropped 81. Enough said!
Heat vs Bulls, 2013 – The Miami Heat’s 27-game winning streak was terminated by the Bulls in Chicago’s 101-97 victory. LeBron, D Wade and Chris Bosh were six wins away from the ’71-’72 Lakers NBA record of 33 consecutive victories.
LeBron did his part, scoring 32 while grabbing seven boards and blocking four shots, but Luol Deng pumped in 28 points while Carlos Boozer chipped in 21 points and 17 rebounds. Miami hadn’t lost in two months, erasing seven double-digit deficits during the streak. They also trailed in the fourth quarter 11 times, and won them all. Except for this one.
