2017 NBA Playoffs highlights, results, and updates: Wizards, Rockets, and Warriors all go up 2-0

Steve Kerr broke a rule, and no one was the wiser.

The Golden StateWarriors’ head coach took off his coat less than a minute into the fourth quarter of Golden State’s Game 2 win over the Portland Trail Blazers on Wednesday. Unlike the last time he took his jacket off — after a heated argument with a referee over a foul call in a 2015 NBA Finals game against the Cleveland Cavaliers — this one was measured.

Chicago Bulls point guard Rajon Rondo is out indefinitely after suffering a fractured right thumb that will not require surgery, the team announced on Friday. He suffered his injury in the second half of Chicago’s Game 2 victory in Boston.

Rondo’s injury has been described as “pretty serious,” according to ESPN’s Chris Haynes, and his return may be dependent upon how long Chicago can extend its postseason.

The NBA has fined Oklahoma City Thunder guard Russell Westbrook $15,000 for “inappropriate language” during his postgame media session on Wednesday, the league announced.

Westbrook posted a triple-double with 51 points, 10 rebounds, and 13 assists in the Thunder’s 115-111 loss to the Houston Rockets in Game 2 of the first round of the Western Conference playoffs. Oklahoma City has now fallen to 0-2 in the series.

The Cleveland Cavaliers messed around for an entire half, had minimal contributions from Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love, and still erased a 26-point deficit to beat the Indiana Pacers in Game 3. Sometimes, when you have LeBron James, that’s just how it works.

It was James who damn near single-handedly pushed Cleveland to their 119-114 win on Thursday. He had 41 points, 13 rebounds, 12 assists, a couple blocks, and only three turnovers. No other Cavalier had more than 13 points.

Lance Stephenson signed with the Indiana Pacers with six games left in the regular season, and we’re so glad he did. All of Stephenson’s quirks are back — his occasional mini-takeovers, his teammates telling him to chill out a little, how he holds the ball with one hand away from his body while waiting for a play to develop. And, yes, the flopping.

The play went uncalled, so Stephenson’s efforts were all for naught. But trust us, it has worked in the past. Here’s my favorite, where he basically pretends to fall asleep on the floor (and that one DID work!).

Home court swings to Memphis for Game 3, as the Grizzlies claw for control in their first-round Western Conference playoff series against the San Antonio Spurs on Thursday in a game airing on TNT and available for live stream on TNT Drama.

San Antonio took the first two games at home behind two Herculean efforts by Kawhi Leonard. They also had a nod from the referees, who whistled twice as many foul calls for the Spurs than for the Grizzlies.

Russell Westbrook shot 4 of 18 in the fourth quarter of the Oklahoma City Thunder’s 115-111 Game 2 loss to the Houston Rockets on Wednesday. He took seven more shots than the rest of his team, but shot a markedly worse percentage

Many were critical of Westbrook’s shot selection after the game. They upbraided him for consistently taking bad shots that set his team back late in the game. Is that a fair criticism?

James Harden and Russell Westbrook provided us one helluva Game 2 slugfest, albeit with a fourth quarter that will turn into the biggest talking point for the next 24 hours. Hold up — we’ll get to that in a little bit. Right now, let’s appreciate what we have in these two players.

Look at these stat lines they recorded on Wednesday. Good grief.

Russell Westbrook presents quite the conundrum.

If Westbrook plays with such a monopolistic style that he takes 43 of the Thunder’s 97 shots in a game, and 22 of the Thunder’s 34 shooting possessions in the fourth quarter, this Oklahoma City team cannot win — not with Westbrook forcing attempts against good help and straight-up defense.

The Golden State Warriors didn’t replace Kevin Durant when he missed Game 2 against the Portland Trail Blazers on Wednesday. They didn’t need to. Instead of assigning him impact to a player, they chopped it up, passed it around and ended up with a dominant 30-point win without a single player even scoring 20 points.

Durant isn’t gone long — he could have played, but is sitting on the side of caution with a strained left calf. Of course, Durant was out for more than a month during the regular season, only returning with three games left on the schedule. To make certain he’s healthy, Golden State doesn’t need to risk playing him in the first round that they believed they could win handily without him. As it turned out, they could.

The Warriors have turned JaVale McGee into the JaVale McGee we always knew he could be. On Wednesday night Game 2 of the Warriors series with the Trail Blazers, Javale McGee scored 15 points on 7-for-7 shooting, with one free throw, five rebounds, and four blocks. What a beautiful night for JaVale.

Sure his shots were at the basket but this is exactly what you need from JaVale if you’re the Warriors. He had 13 points in eight minutes in the first quarter!

You can already see the headlines and the talk shows and the radio topics and the Twitter takes coming for Westbrook. The next 24 hours will be filled with, why didn’t he pass more? Is he selfish? Does he only care about his own stats?

While James Harden trusted his teammates to score down the stretch, Russell Westbrook did not. Since Westbrook shot 4-of-18 in the fourth quarter, the loss will be blamed on him. It’s a fair point, because if you miss 14 shots in the final quarter, you deserve blame. But it’s also not quite that simple.

When Paul Millsap said after Game 1 that the Wizards were playing MMA, not basketball, he mostly inspired jokes. But his words must have had a subliminal impact on the refereeing crew who officiated Game 2, because it was a slugfest full of a ridiculous amount of foul calls.

The Wizards hung onto the win, despite a combined 53 fouls and 71 free throws, both up from an already foul-prone Game 1. John Wall was enormous, not taking over for a six-minute stretch like he did on Sunday, but instead contributing consistently throughout the game. He finished with 32 points on 9-of-20 shooting along with nine assists and five rebounds, and his leak out dunk with less than a minute remaining helped stave off any potential Atlanta victory.

Is there anything Russell Westbrook can’t do?

He spins past Lou Williams, who, despite grabbing him by the waist, still could not stop Westbrook.

In the third quarter of Wizards-Hawks Game 2, Washington fans began chanting, “Refs you suck.” Fans often do this, but the impetus behind this is that both sides have been complaining about the refereeing since the series started. Here are the chants.

And confirmation from our Wizards blog.

Golden State Warriors forward Kevin Durant has a left calf strain and will not play in Game 2 of the team’s first-round series against the Portland Trail Blazers on Wednesday, according to ESPN’s Marc Stein.

It is unclear when Durant suffered the injury. He played 35 minutes in the Warriors’ 121-109 Game 1 victory, scoring 32 points on 12-of-20 shooting and grabbing 11 rebounds. But the calf strain is on the same leg Golden State’s All-Star suffered a Grade 2 MCL sprain and tibial bone bruise on in March that sidelined him for more than a month in the regular season.