1. i hate russell westbrook. easily my least favorite player in the nba. i understand that he's a shoot-first point guard. i understand that his confidence is through the roof after being the thirrd best player on the FIBA championship team. i understand that he's possibly the most agile guard in the nba, save for rondo and d-rose. but he is, easily, THE WORST point guard in the nba. let me breakdown a russell westbrook half-court possession - dribble the ball by yourself four feet from the three-point line for ten seconds, call off durant who is looking to set a high screen, drive to your "spot" on the floor (aka eighteen feet from the hoop at the shoulder of the free-throw line), hoist up and miss a jumper. i counted, and durant did not touch the ball in four of the final eight possessions of the game. FOUR OF THE FINAL EIGHT! AND WESTBROOK DIDN'T EVEN PASS THE BALL IN THREE OF THOSE! fuck you russell westbrook. watch 'boondock saints' on your own time.
2. i've been down on kendrick perkins for pretty much the entire playoffs so far, but he did show up to play today. thirty plus minutes, thirteen boards and, most importantly, he played up his enforcer role as best he could. too bad he has to double those numbers for the rest of this series to match the production of the memphis front-court. thunder front-court (ibaka and perkins) : a combined twenty points and twenty one boards. serviceable, but nothing amazing. the memphis front-court (randolph and gasol), meanwhile : a combined thirty seven points and twenty eight (!) boards. total destruction. even the iranian dream, hamed haddadi, threw up five points in six minutes. swag.
3. this series is hardly over yet (and i do expect it to go seven), but memphis is going to win every single one of these hard-nosed, grind-it-out, make-every-possession-count type of games. and that's an amazing thing to say because they have tony allen on their team and he's the biggest fuck up in the nba. in the second quarter, dude hung on the rim after fouling a player, giving them an automatic basket, a free-throw AND a technical free-throw. such a fucking moron.
4. in z-bo we trust.
