Russell Westbrook injury could bite Thunder in playoffs
LOS ANGELES — As Oklahoma City Thunder players and coaches filed out of the Staples Center with the longest of faces Thursday night, their minds no doubt turned to these next couple of months and how challenging they now will be.
Kevin Durant stood at one end of the tunnel near the Thunder locker room, the reigning MVP's right foot in a boot and his gut likely in a bind. Russell Westbrook had long since left this surreal scene, exiting by way of the loading dock with his right hand covered in bandage wrap after it was broken in the Thunder's 93-90 loss to the Los Angeles Clippers.
Depending on the diagnosis that is expected to be more clear on Friday, the Thunder's championship hopes may have gone out the door with him. It's unclear if the injury, which Thunder coach Scott Brooks called a small fracture of the second metacarpal, will require surgery.
"What seed were the Rockets when they won it all (in 1995)?" one Thunder official asked as he tried to process the unwelcome news.
They were, for anyone who doesn't recall, the sixth seed. Behold the Thunder's new best-case scenario.
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The notion of the Thunder enduring all these setbacks and securing a top-four seed in the Western Conference playoffs suddenly seems far-fetched, their focus now forced to be limited to the short-term prospect of playing hard every night while all these wounds heal. Durant is expected to miss at least another month and possibly more, as the Jones fracture he suffered on Oct. 12 is among the more complicated of its kind. Westbrook, of course, was raring to go after three knee procedures in the span of six months forced him to miss most of the 2013 playoffs and 36 games last season.
That's hardly the end of the current injury list, either, with Oklahoma City now hoping to be granted a "hardship exception," reserved for the rarest of circumstances, to sign an extra player because of all that ails them. Mitch McGarry (broken foot), Grant Jerrett (ankle surgery), Anthony Morrow (strained knee) and Durant will allow them to quality for this exception, which mandates that at least four players miss three consecutive regular season games.
A second exception could be granted now that Westbrook has joined the bunch, though not until he misses three games. Oklahoma City must play its third regular season game (Saturday against the Denver Nuggets) before the first exception can be granted. They're still without super sixth man guard Reggie Jackson (ankle sprain) and guard Jeremy Lamb (back sprain) as well, though they may return soon.
All of this makes for quite the role reversal for Thunder forward Serge Ibaka.
Five months ago, he was the one hurting with an ill-timed calf injury in the early stages of the Western Conference finals against the San Antonio Spurs while his teammates tried to make up for his absence.
"It's tough," said Ibaka, who had 17 points and nine rebounds against the Clippers and was one of only eight Thunder players available by game's end. "We were not ready for it…We have a lot of guys with injury, and we need to just figure (it) out. We need to just keep playing the way we did tonight, to keep fighting…We've got guys. We've been there before.
"You know, what happened to me last year now happened to KD and Russ, it's something I can not really talk about because I can not really control that. What I can do is keep staying together. I'm going to tell the guys, stay together and keep pushing, keep working."
Said Perry Jones, the third-year forward who is playing in Durant's place and had a career high 32 points in the loss, "It hurts, especially Russ being out. He was definitely our leader out there on the floor. Having him out is going to hurt the team tremendously, but at the same time we can all be collective and he's still going to lead us on the bench."
Westbrook joins Durant in those duties, as the NBA's points leader of the past five seasons spent the game encouraging teammates, talking with coaches and occasionally fuming when the calls didn't go the Thunder's way. Brooks, who had said even before Westbrook went down that this rash of injuries was like nothing he'd seen before, would surely rather they were helping on the floor.