Well, the Thunder-Spurs series is suddenly a lot more interesting.
We saw the hard fouls late in Game 5 against Jared McCain, one by former Duke star Mason Plumlee, and one by Bismarck Biyombo.
What we didn’t see was the video of Victor Wembanyama whispering to each of them as he left the game.
Shortly after entering the game, Plumlee gave McCain an elbow in the back that sent him tumbling. He looked up after that with some confusion, which is understandable. Hitting someone in the back is sort of a cheap
shot.
Then Biyombo hit him in the face on a drive. McCain hit the floor and it looked like his the back of his head bounced off the wood.
And when he went to the line, he asked Biyombo “’[w]hy’d you do that man’… and he was like ‘I got another one for you too’”
The thing about playing like that is it is going to get a response. The classic example of that was Robert Parish taking out Bill Laimbeer in the 1987 Eastern Conference Finals after Laimbeer had given both Parish and Larry Bird cheap shots.
Basically, everyone endorsed it as a useful disciplinary measure for Laimbeer, who was infamous for dirty plays.
Well, aside from the league office, anyway, but our guess is if you asked them privately at the time, they punished Parish reluctantly. Laimbeer was just a dirty player who deserved what he got.
Anyway, with the clip out and people clearly thinking, rightly or wrongly, that Wemby told his more powerful teammates to deal with McCain, the Thunder almost have to retaliate.
And in this case, their target will almost certainly be Wemby, and punishing the reed-thin big man will not be difficult.
Isaiah Hartenstein would be the logical guy to do it, but they can’t afford to lose him, so they may send in someone like Jaylin Williams to teach him a lesson he’s going to learn eventually, anyway.
Interestingly, without the injured Thomas Sorber, the Thunder are really lacking a powerful big guy. The NBA doesn’t really do enforcers the way it used to, either.
Back in the day, you had guys like Maurice Lucas to protect Bill Walton. Charles Oakley used to do it for the New York Knicks. So did Anthony Mason. Ron Artest, aka Metta World Peace, was a terrifying enforcer in his day. Just ask Tyler Hansbrough.
OKC has shown that it has tremendous depth and versatility, but other than Hartenstein, it really doesn’t have a rough, tough guy who can impose his will on people in the lane. And that partially explains why they are so keen on trading up to get Cameron Boozer. He’s more than an enforcer, but the guy is seriously powerful, and that’s an asset they could use. And it looks like Washington might be a willing trade partner.
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