The Utah Jazz dispatched the Oklahoma City Thunder Friday night, closing out the first round series with a narrow and vaguely controversial victory on Utah’s home floor behind more stout defense and just enough shot-making from their various role-players. Donovan Mitchell was fantastic, dropping in 38 points on 26…

Once the Thunder were down 3-1, the Russell Westbrook obituaries had already begun to roll in; down 25, the eulogizers had probably started dipping their quills back in purple. What we’d already heard many times over was going to be repeated once again, at blaring, self-satisfied volume: You can’t win with Russell…

It can be a little disorienting to remind yourself that grim and gritty Ricky Rubio, the veteran point guard of the Utah Jazz, has played exactly the same number of playoff games over the course of his NBA career as Donovan Mitchell has. Rubio, whose transformation from doe-eyed, baby-faced sidekick to leathery,…

Oklahoma City TV announcer Brian Davis has been suspended by the team for Game 1 of the Thunder’s first-round series against the Jazz after he used the phrase, “out of his cotton-pickin’ mind” to describe Russell Westbrook in the team’s final regular-season game.

During the second quarter of last night’s game against the Grizzlies, Thunder play-by-play man Brian Davis capped off a big Thunder play by declaring that Russell Westbrook “out of his cotton-pickin’ mind.”

Russell Westbrook completed one of the greatest regular season achievements in NBA history tonight, becoming the first player ever to average a triple-double in two straight years. He didn’t make it very suspenseful either. Safe in points and assists but needing 16 boards, Westbrook went all out for rebounds against…

Russell Westbrook needs 16 rebounds tonight against the Grizzlies in order to average a triple-double for the second straight season, which would be an unimpeachably impressive achievement. After Carmelo Anthony joked earlier this week about Westbrook “stealing” rebounds, Westbrook spoke out against those who discount…

The Oklahoma City Thunder handed the Houston Rockets just their 7th home loss of the season Saturday night, by the relatively low score of 108-102. The Rockets were without Eric Gordon and Ryan Anderson, but that’s not supposed to matter much—the Rockets had all of Chris Paul, James Harden, and Clint Capela in the…

Russell Westbrook’s remarkable final shot in the Thunder’s 103-99 loss to the Spurs last night was a doozy. His four three-point attempts from that game are best appreciated in sequence. Together they chart a descent into Westbrook’s wonderful, dark heart.

If I weren’t a basketball fan—if you aren’t one right now—basketblogging, I swear, would itself be an insurmountable barrier to entry. Cricket has incomprehensible structure; baseball has interminable periods of non-action; basketball has a breathtakingly pretentious universe of bloggers and Twitter goofballs. Get a…

Here are some fun clips. For all intents and purposes, they might as well be the highlights of Zaza Pachulia’s 14-year NBA career.

The Warriors pounded the bejeezus out of the Oklahoma City Thunder Saturday night, to the tune of 112-80. 80 points is the fewest scored in a game this season by the Thunder, and 32 points is their biggest margin of defeat. It was a wipeout: the Warriors won every quarter, and held the trio of Russell Westbrook, Paul…

With less than two seconds remaining in tonight’s Thunder-Kings game, Sacramento got what seemed like it should be the killer play it needed to seal a trip to overtime: Vince Carter from waywayway back, and Justin Jackson redeeming him with a put-back that tied the game.

Last night, the Thunder traveled to Oakland and were the best version of themselves, a team that overwhelms and antagonizes the opponent while producing bushels of cool-ass highlights. If you’re into Warriors schadenfreude then you probably relished Draymond Green getting ejected for yelling a whole bunch and Kevin…

At the end of the third quarter of tonight’s Thunder-Warriors game, Russell Westbrook benefitted from a bizarrely bad foul call that was triggered by nothing but tripping over his own two feet, no meaningful contact from Golden State necessary:

By now you must be familiar with the finale, which is worth watching and rewatching and watching, with good reason.

As he left the court following a wild 127-124 loss to the Nuggets on Gary Harris’s buzzer-beating three, Russell Westbrook found himself confronted by a screaming fan:

Gary Harris’s buzzer-beating three-pointer earned Denver a 127-124 win and fouled a would-be legend-making three hit seconds earlier by Paul George to draw Oklahoma City even with the Nuggets.

I doubt anyone had Sixers-Thunder pegged to become one of the spicier NBA rivalries headed into this season, but here we are, two games into the beef, with Russell Westbrook and Joel Embiid reaching new levels of petty.