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It’s hard to understand anything of what happened during Game 7 on Wednesday night between the Houston Rockets and the Oklahoma City Thunder. It was an extravagant 48 minutes, capped by a great turning point that took about 11 months to resolve. Before it came to an end, we saw egregious failuresinvading officials, strategic mistakes, and chaotic despair: Ten blindfolded men on the deck of a sinking ship with only five life jackets.
The nerves were palpable: Houston understood that defeat would likely result in major changes for its head coach, general manager, two top stars and a basketball philosophy that pushes the limits; Thunder leader Chris Paul really wanted to beat the team that traded him. These were not your typical first round bets.
But somehow, those bets weren’t the most compelling thing about last night’s game. Instead, we were wowed by one of the least likely NBA loser stories of all time: undrafted two-way rookie Luguentz Dort versus eight-time All-Star, three-time scoring champion and only Player Plus. NBA Valued James Harden. By almost any quantifiable metric, this was a firecracker versus an atomic bomb, and yet Dort was almost the hero, while Harden added another lackluster playoff performance to a pile that may one day overshadow all of those accolades.
Harden woke up this morning with … four baskets, 17 points, eight bricks from nine three-point attempts and, luckily for him, a game-saving block for Dort. Dort finished with 30 points, six 3-pointers and an unshakable defense over Harden. His 50 percent shot from the 3-point line was juicy – Dort’s flawed mechanics is a big reason he wasn’t drafted, and before his explosive season finale there were two donut outings – a 0-out drought. 6 from the outside in Game 3 and an embarrassed 0-for-9 outing in Game 5, which justified Rockets coach Mike D’Antoni’s decision to let him shoot.
But Dort’s defense was a theatrical game of chess, fought with confidence and cunning with nothing to lose. The 6’3 ”, 220-pound Dort dogged Harden throughout the series in a way no other defender could: Harden’s effective field goal percentage in seven games was 15.4 percent higher when Dort was not in court. Dort’s coverage was so committed, so relentless, fearless and obsessive that it almost served as a referendum on the change-everything style that every great defense has embraced in the last five years. Dort rejected to change. Against most teams, such a narrow mindset will almost always backfire, but in this case it felt like he was biting into the head of a snake.
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