Westbrook returns and OKC smashes the Knicks, 105-78

BOX SCORE

It really didn’t take long to see the change in the Thunder. First possession, Russell Westbrook set up Steven Adams beautifully in a pick-and-roll slip. Second possession, Westbrook set up Lance Thomas with a cross-court transition bullet to Lance Thomas. Third possession, Westbrook set up Serge Ibaka in a pick-and-pop with a slick overhead hook pass. Three possessions, three assists.

But it wasn’t until the fourth trip that Westbrook formally announced that he’s back.

With one quick step, Westbrook exploded along the baseline to throw down a two-handed dunk, putting an early stamp on the game. And as if that wasn’t enough, a few moments later, he snared a rebound, busted up the floor, unleashed a ruthless in-and-out dribble to roast three Knicks, and soared to the rim for a layup. Oh yeah, he’s definitely back.

Here’s what Westbrook did in 23 minutes — 23! Minutes! — 32 points on 12-17 shooting, eight assists and seven rebounds.

It wasn’t just the raw numbers, which are absolutely sensational, but it was the change in mood. There was a refreshed energy in the arena even before tipoff. Fans could sense it, the players could feel it. This is a new Thunder season, and it started with a bang.

“The area that’s not shown on the statsheet is his ability to raise the level of his teammates,” Scott Brooks said. “That’s what the great ones do, and that’s what he did tonight.”

Westbrook admitted this morning after shootaround he expected a little bit of rust in a lot of areas. Wherever it was, I couldn’t find any. He sheepishly laughed when asked about it, but did try and nitpick himself a little.

“Ah, shit, I don’t — I threw a few balls out of bounds, I threw a few balls out of bounds man,” he said. “I was just trying to take what the defense gave me, take my time making some shots.”

Westbrook’s presence alone wasn’t it, though. Having a dynamic playmaker that can assault opposing defenses on his own is something every team wants, but the Thunder have been building to this point. The team Russell Westbrook returned to isn’t the team that he left on Oct. 30. They’re tougher, they’re more together, and they’re deeper.

The Thunder didn’t necessarily execute all that better, but it was more that they ran their offense with pace. The sets had a whole lot more intensity to them, with harder cutting, better screen and straight line attacks that made the defense work. What makes the Thunder so special is the overwhelming waves of athleticism and talent they can hit you with, and nobody throws more haymakers than Westbrook.

“Just pace, man,” Westbrook said. “We did a good job of playing fast, of playing at our pace. And it showed.”

They’re still just 5-12, but this is step one on the long road back. Westbrook has returned, with Durant soon to follow. But all of that good stuff the Thunder had done in losing revealed itself tonight. Yes, yes, the Knicks are terrible and they didn’t have Melo. Forget that. Those standards the Thunder have been striving for, all that talk of simply being a better team when their stars returned, were showcased tonight.

But as every player would tell you, you can’t get too high after this game. It’s one win, and they need a whole lot more like it to fix this thing. As good as he is, Westbrook isn’t going to produce nightly lines like that — I think — and there will be plenty of games ahead where they will need to rely on the grit, character and determination they’ve showed off the last four weeks. Only now, they have a supreme finisher to (hopefully) carry them across the finish line in those.

The Thunder have a lot of ground to make up, and limited room for error. But you can gain it pretty quickly when Westbrook is driving your bus. They can’t afford off nights. They can’t lose focus. There’s a new urgency for them now as they basically have near must-win games the rest of the season.

“In the past, even when we were winning we wanted to try and have that urgency to try and get our level of play where it needed to be to try and win a championship,” Collison said. Now it’s different. We’re in a hole with wins and losses, so obviously, we need wins. It might be a little easier to preach that and for all of us to remember that because of where our record is at, but it’s definitely important. We have to try and come out and win every game.”

As the saying goes, the night is darkest before the dawn. Starting 3-12, it was getting pretty damn dark out there. But with Westbrook back and Durant to join him shortly, the sun appears to finally be rising in Oklahoma City.

NOTES:

• Nick Collison: “I think Russell back made a huge difference. He just pushes the ball and everyone has to keep up with him and it picks up our pace. I thought he played incredible. Just his style of play, the way he was coming off, finding people. When he plays like that we’re tough to beat.”

• Westbrook on if it feels like a new season: “I don’t know if I’d say that. You don’t want to take away the credit to all the guys in this locker room, and all the work they’ve put in to get us to this point. But I think now we’ve got to come and play every game like our last. We’ve got a lot of guys coming back and we’ve got to be ready to play.”

• The Thunder have had three 30-point games this season. Westbrook has two of them (38 on opening night, 32 tonight). Perry Jones’ 32 against the Clippers is the other.

• Via Elias: Westbrook is the first player in the shot-clock era with 32 points and eight assists in 24 or fewer minutes.

• Here’s how good Westbrook is: He even made Lance Thomas look like a passable NBA player tonight.

• The Thunder entered the game dead last in fast break points per game at 6.1. Tonight they had 17.

• To briefly summarize the first quarter, Westbrook played eight minutes and still outscored the Knicks 14-13.

• If you didn’t watch this game, I can’t stress enough how flipping fantastic Westbrook looked. That first eight minutes was simply spectacular. I don’t know if he’s played a better eight minutes, ever. Sensational stuff.

• The only area Westbrook appeared limited was he couldn’t do his patented hard clap to gripe at referees. Once, he started to and kind of caught himself, instead hitting his left hand on his right wrist really softly.

• Scott Brooks was asked pregame who benefits most from Westbrook’s return. He said simply, “Me.” I can see why.

• Westbrook very noticeably sprinted out during pregame intros. On that: “You get so used to sitting on the side, coming back here, taking a shower, putting a suit on, coming out, sitting on the side. And now I got an opportunity to go out and hear my name called. You never want to take that for granted. Never any time, and I was just hyped to hear my and run out on the floor.”

• Brooks said that the Thunder have intentionally been playing slow without Westbrook: “I want to play fast. I want to play with good pace. That’s what we want to do, that’s how we want to play. But [with the injuries] we had to put ourselves in a position to have the most success. We gave ourselves the best chance of winning by not playing as fast and executing in the halfcourt and slowing the game up.”

• In the second quarter, an errant Thunder pass went out of bounds and Brooks whipped it behind his back, back onto the court. For the first time in about four weeks, he was having fun again.

• Not only do the Thunder appear to be good again, but they’re fun again.

• Collison on if it feels like the start of a new season: “Yeah it does. I think we sense that, and that helps some. But I think we’ve figured out how to play a little bit better. We took our lumps early and we obviously didn’t win a ton of games, but the level of play and style of basketball was better the last week or two.”

• Interesting from Collison: “There’s a lot of sets we haven’t even ran yet because we haven’t had the right pieces in there.”

• The Cole Aldrich tribute video was pretty fitting: disappointing and non-existent.

• Very quietly Adams set a new career-high in rebounds with 13.

• Seriously though, one of the more overlooked aspects of the Harden trade is that the Thunder turned Cole Aldrich into Steven Adams.

• So, one of the questions I have right now is if we could go inside the mind of Reggie Jackson, which was better: scoring 26 in a close loss, or scoring 10 in a blowout win?

• Jeremy Lamb rolling off that confidence from the Jazz game, picking right up where he left off — 13 points on 3-5 shooting, 3-4 from 3.

• Excellent question from @achillesheald: “Do players go to visiting locker room for some of Fisher’s cologne?”

• Jackson was the first player off the bench and he checked in for the wrong guy, subbing in for Roberson and not Thomas. Getting re-acclimated to this sixth man thing takes time you guys.

• It’s worth paying Perk $9 million a year just to watch the bench absolutely lose their shit every time he scores. They absolutely love that guy.

• Kendrick Adams tonight: 14 points, 19 rebounds.

• Shane Larkin is what Damian Lillard would look like if he was terrible.

• It says a lot about Amar’e Stoudemire that not only did the Thunder feel comfortable letting Perk check him, but that Perk checked him really well.

• It’s a fun thing to watch Kevin Durant argue with officials with the Thunder ahead 32 points in the fourth quarter.

• Big ovation for Derek Fisher as he was introduced. A couple Thunder players even were clapping.

• Guy giving the pregame prayer gave thanks for quick healing for Russell Westbrook. Hashtag, Oklahoma.

• Before the game I was talking with another writer about he and I are some of the only ones that always go in the Thunder’s locker room pregame. The reason I do it, I said, is that you never know what kind of little nugget of info you might get, maybe something really good to use, or just a small, fun throwaway note. Tonight, I got something really good: Preparing for his first NBA game ever, Grant Jerrett was eating a pear.

Next up: At the Pelicans on Tuesday