Kevin Durant with some thoughts on the new-look Thunder, Russ adjusting to playing with Carmelo/George pic.twitter.com/5QWL1QEQ4k
— Anthony Slater (@anthonyVslater) November 22, 2017
Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook still aren’t talking.
But that doesn’t mean Durant isn’t watching.
On Wednesday night, Durant returns to Oklahoma City with Golden State to square off against his former team in a city that still holds some resentment over Durant’s decision to sign with the Warriors last summer. Durant became a star during his days with the Thunder, and formed a pairing with point guard Russell Westbrook that made for one of the league’s most potent and exciting one-two combos.
After the Warriors’ shootaround on Wednesday morning, Durant met with reporters in Oklahoma City and offered his assessment of how Westbrook’s role and responsibilities have changed this season, now that he’s surrounded by two new stars, Paul George and Carmelo Anthony.
“He’s (Westbrook) playing a floor game,” Durant said. “When you have so much talent, you’re not going to see the same numbers. Just because there’s more possessions being used by players that can handle the ball, players that can create their own shot, that can create for other players so you’ve got PG and Melo, he’s not going to have the ball in his hands. So you might cut some of those possessions down, but he’s still doing the same things rebounding and assisting and scoring.”
Westbrook’s numbers are down across the board this season, as his 20.8 points per game represent a massive drop off from the 31.6 points per game he scored last season, his first without Durant by his side. Westbrook’s rebounding and assist numbers are also down from his totals over the last two seasons, but Durant attributes that to the competence of the players surrounding the Thunder point guard and Westbrook’s willingness to expand his game in other ways.
“It’s just not 30, 10 and 10, it may be 29 and eight which is still pretty damn good,” Durant said. “When you’ve got good players, it takes away some of your possessions and allows you to do some of the other things on the court that’s important that people don’t see. They’re leading the league in steals, they score off of turnovers so I’m sure taking the ball out of his hands is letting him do other stuff.”
Though the Thunder are just 7-9 through their first 16 games, Durant appeared confident that Oklahoma City would begin to figure it out and work their way into the playoff picture in a hotly-contested Western Conference. Right now, the Thunder sit in the 10th spot in the West, but Oklahoma City also is one of just two teams (Golden State) to have three players averaging more than 20 points per game.
“They’ve got talent, man, that kind of exceeds a lot,” Durant said. “It’s a league right now where there’s a lot of young teams and a lot of teams trying to find their identities. I feel like the Thunder team, you’ve got Russ, PG and Melo. They’re still trying to figure out how to play with each other, chemistry is, we talk about chemistry a lot but it’s more so just being comfortable on the basketball floor on both ends with each other. They’ll figure it out at some point. They score so well, all three of them that any given night, they can go off. All of them are scoring 20 points per game so at some point throughout the season, all of them are starting to make those shots, all of them will play together and it will be fun to watch.”