Thunder Views: Fourth quarter Felton, Paul George snubbed, and Westbrook wins the day

The NBA announced their all-star reserves on Tuesday night, and Paul George was left off the roster. Russell Westbrook made sure to stand up for his guy as he gave his opinion on what being an all-star really means.

George is a defensive player of the year candidate who’s also averaging 20.9 point per game and shooting 42% from beyond the arc. As of Tuesday, he also led the league in deflections and steals per game. But yeah, totally not an all-star.

I’m not one to argue about people getting snubbed from all-star games, as there’s a limited amount of space, but George really seemed like an obvious choice to me.

Let’s not forget, the Thunder played a basketball game last night! It wasn’t totally pretty, but this was a great win. OKC made the plays they needed to in the fourth quarter and got some crucial, timely stops. It was a terrific crunchtime performance for their fifth straight victory.

Here was the game winning bucket from Russ:

Spotlight

You can focus on a number of things from yesterday’s fourth quarter.

OKC trailed by 11 to start the fourth quarter after pulling within 3 during the third. At the time, it seemed like yet another letdown where the team seemed to figure things out and were about to surge ahead, only to falter and again fall behind by double-digits. Yet this time, the team refocused on both ends of the court. It was a total team effort, as the Thunder shot 12 of 23 from the floor in the fourth while holding the Nets to 23 points by virtue of forcing 5 turnovers . But what really stuck out from their comeback in the final frame?

Russ’ 10 points on 4/6 shooting? Andre Roberson’s defense on Dinwiddie during the game’s final possession? Raymond Felton’s 10 point run? Paul George’s sh... Wait, let’s talk about Ray.

Felton came on with the all-bench lineup to begin the fourth quarter, and naturally scored 10 straight points in just under two-and-a-half-minutes. It was exactly what the Thunder needed from their reserves if they wanted to have any chance of winning.

He’s gotten into a habit of providing a nice scoring punch off the bench, and Tuesday was no different. The Thunder were +12 with Felton on the court last night.

There were a lot of great things that allowed the Thunder to get back into this one in the final frame, but Felton immediately got them going in the right direction.

Here is what Antonio Daniels had to say after the game:

Quick Rumbles

• Russ finished 32-6-5 on 12/27 shooting.
• PG may have not been named an all-star on Tuesday night, but he did have 28 points and 9 rebounds.
• As mentioned above, Roberson locked down Spencer Dinwiddie on the game’s final possession, but the three point attempt initially looked as though it had gone in. Here’s a look at the fake game winner:

• The Nets his 16 threes on Tuesday. Not too shabby.
• OKC is now a season-high seven games above .500.
• Oh, and just to state the obvious, Russ was named an all-star yesterday.

A Look Ahead

The Thunder welcome the Washington Wizards to town on Thursday night at 8:00 CT.

The squad from the District had been having some issues in their locker room as of late, including a players-only meeting that did the opposite of what those get-togethers are intended to do. We’ll see how they respond in OKC.