Thunder double-teamed James Harden so he couldn’t beat them, but he did with a perfect pass

The Oklahoma City Thunder double-teamed James Harden. As he curled around a Nene screen on an inbounds pass, both defenders followed Harden to the top of the key with 3.8 seconds left in the game. Naturally, the whole team focused on Houston’s best player. It burnt them.

Nene rolled wide open to the basket and Harden found him with a perfect pass over the defense. That wasn’t an easy pass, by any means, but Harden snuck it past Steven Adams’ mammoth arms to reach a lonely Nene near the rim. Look how open he ended up!

In a battle of the top two MVP candidates (in my eyes, at least), Russell Westbrook won the battle. He came out with a scoring vengeance early and ended up with 49 points on 16-of-34 shooting, along with eight rebounds, five assists, and eight made threes. Harden’s night was quieter — 26 points, eight rebounds, 12 assists on 6-of-16 shooting — but the most important play he made all night didn’t record him a single statistic. Nene, a 57 percent free throw shooter, made both at the line.

Westbrook’s attempt at a game-winner was a shot he took himself, a pull-up three-pointer, but it’s not really fair to compare the two. Maybe Westbrook should have pushed the ball inside toward the basket, attempting to score near the rim because that’s what he’s amazing at. But faulting either player for mistakes despite sensational games is silliness.

Oklahoma City shouldn’t have even been in the game on the final possession, given that they were down 18 points midway through the third quarter. It was a thrilling finish between the two, in a matchup we love seeing every time it happens. Once again, Westbrook vs. Harden didn’t disappoint.