Warriors vs Thunder finally bigger than Durant vs Westbrook

OAKLAND -- The Kevin Durant-Russell Westbrook subplot, which received the sensationalized treatment of a Pay-Per-View title fight, has its resolution. It’s history, so Warriors-Thunder is now about the fate of two basketball teams.

Which is as it should be when the challenger, Oklahoma City, has smoked the defending champion Warriors twice in a row this season. That fact is plenty enough to generate drama.

“In two games against them, we really weren’t very competitive,” Warriors coach Steve Kerr said.

In the first meeting, last Nov. 22, the Thunder attacked like a school of piranha. The Warriors led for all of about four minutes and not at all after the first five minutes. OKC scored 13 points off 10 first-half turnovers, went up 17 at the half and as much as 26 before taking a 108-91 victory in Oklahoma City.

If that got the full attention of the Warriors, it didn’t seem make a difference when the team confronted each other 18 days ago in Oakland. The Thunder rolled to a wire-to-wire 125-105 win that raised eyebrows around the NBA.

When the Warriors get their third crack on Saturday at Oracle Arena, there will be stakes. Not so much for OKC, but certainly for the Warriors.

“They beat us twice, so we definitely want to win,” Durant said, as if reading directly from the platitude pamphlet. “We want to play good basketball for four quarters and we want to win every possession.”

This is not “one of 82,” or “just another game.” This is about a team taking up for itself, fighting back after being twice bullied. The Thunder forced 47 turnovers, off which the scored 72 points. The Warriors didn’t merely lose those games. They were handled, throttled, backhanded and boot-stomped.

A proud team such as the Warriors doesn’t suffer such humiliation unless it is helpless, and that’s the last thing they are against an OKC team that has lost 26 games, as many as four in a row (twice) and by as much as 25, to the Lakers no less.

“We didn’t play with enough force,” Durant said, referring to the first two games against the Thunder. “They’re long and athletic, so we’ve to got to play with a little bit more force. And I’m confident that we will.”

The Warriors have lost several games this season against vastly inferior teams, even at Oracle. They’ve been sloppy enough to give away games and passive enough on defense to invite defeat. These factors have dropped them into unfamiliar territory, with the second-best record in the Western Conference and facing what looms as a bloody battle over the final seven weeks for the overall No. 1 seed.

Now, with the All-Star break behind them and the regular-season finish coming into view, they’d like to erase those memories quickly, beginning with the beginning.

“We’ve just got to come out with a sense of urgency,” Durant explained. “We’ve got to take the game. We can’t sit back and be relaxed and expect the game to just go our way. Sometimes, we can do that. But most of the time, we’ve got to go out there and take it.”

That’s the thing with the Thunder. With the irrepressible Westbrook leading the charge, they seem to find another gear when taking the floor against the Warriors.

The Warriors know they have an extra gear. They don’t know if it’s enough to chill the Thunder.

“The main focus is ourselves,” Kerr said. “But you go into a game knowing that a team has beaten you twice, handily, you have to take that into account and play accordingly,” Kerr said. “I think our guys will be ready to go.”

Durant seems ready, at least mentally.

Asked about his comments during All-Star Weekend, when he admitted being primarily guilty for the deterioration of his relationship with Westbrook, while also making reference to them having talked, Durant brushed away elaboration.

“Does that have anything to do with basketball?” he asked. “It don’t really matter what we talked about. The only thing that matters is the basketball court. We got a tough one tomorrow.”

Give the man points for keeping with the facts.