Russell Westbrook was upset with Darius Bazley for committing what he felt was an unsportsmanlike play on Wednesday night.
Westbrook’s Los Angeles Lakers blew a 26-point lead and lost to the rebuilding Oklahoma City Thunder on the road. The loss was so embarrassing that the Lakers got the meme treatment as a result.
With just four seconds left and his Thunder leading 120-115, Bazley stole a pass and dribbled across the court for a dunk with 1.5 seconds left. Westbrook was upset after the play and got ejected for chewing out his opponent.
Russ got ejected after getting into it with Bazley. https://t.co/SLzrisS0Hv
— Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) October 28, 2021
After the game, Westbrook shared his feelings on the situation.
“When s— like that happens I don’t let it slide,” Westbrook said after the game (profanity censored by LBS) via The Athletic’s Bill Oram. “There’s certain things you just don’t do in sports. Game already over and I didn’t like it. Simple as that.”
One could argue that the game wasn’t over at the time the Lakers were inbounding the ball. However, Bazley did not need to dunk the ball after getting the steal; he could have just dribbled out the clcok.
Even his coach acknowledged the error and took the blame for the situation.
Mark Daigneault says on the Darius Bazley dunk “we haven’t covered that, and that’s on me.” Says “in a perfect world, we probably are running that out, but I’m taking that one because we haven’t covered that…we are trying to juice our team with confidence and to not back down.”
— Rylan Stiles (@Rylan_Stiles) October 28, 2021
Westbrook was probably mostly upset about committing 10 turnovers as his team blew a big lead to a bad team. He probably took things out on Bazley. But Bazley also just learned that it’s more respectful of your opponents to just dribble out the clock rather than dunk if you have the game in hand.
The main takeaway is that the Lakers have much bigger problems than whether someone showboated on them or not. The circumstances of the defeat are a much bigger concern.
As for Bazley, this isn’t the first time that his judgment has been called into question.
