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It's not quite true that future opponents of the Golden State Warriors will look at Klay Thompson's 60-point eruption and say to themselves, "Well, you've just got to live with that."

But it's close.

And that—the wholly inequitable state of affairs in which foes lack the resources to prevent the Warriors' third option from exploding—might be the scariest aspect of Thompson's 60-point night during a 142-106 victory against the Indiana Pacers.

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It's absolutely true that the Pacers were gassed while playing the second night of a back-to-back set. This is effectively a death sentence against the Warriors, who were rested and ready. It's also true that the Pacers just aren't very good, particularly on defense.

Those factors had plenty to do with Thompson going off.

But so did the presence of Stephen Curry and Kevin Durant, who, by league-wide consensus, command attention ahead of Thompson. Curry always has the ball, and we learned last year that sending any fewer than two defenders to stop him is a mistake. Unanimous MVPs demand the full focus of a defense.

So do 7-foot scoring champs who have also won an MVP award—even of the non-unanimous variety.

Those guys get together and do things like this:

This is largely why Monta Ellis, former Warrior and lifelong reluctant dabbler in defense, spent a huge chunk of Thompson's 40-point first half futilely chasing him around. Ellis, too small and too inattentive, is an extreme example of an ill-qualified Thompson defender.

But opposing teams generally assign their best wing stopper to either Curry or Durant, leaving compromised options for Thompson. Before the game, nobody would have faulted the Pacers for setting assignments as they did.

In this instance, Paul George didn't line up against Thompson until it was far too late.

So Klay got hot:

And then he got hotter:

And then he expanded like the sun and consumed a galaxy:

And he stayed hot, forever and ever, amen:

Ultimately, this is a small and obvious point. The Warriors have too many dangerous players for typical defenses to stop. It's a pick-your-poison situation where every toxin is deadly.

Thompson just happened to be historically lethal on Monday, per ESPN's Tom Haberstroh and Micah Adams:

Here's what Pacers coach Nate McMillan had to say about it:

Let's just breeze by the fact that Indiana stubbornly refused to switch screens for most of the game, a schematic blunder that should all but disqualify McMillan from waxing strategic on his team's failures. Instead, we can make a more basic correction.

It's not that Indiana didn't give more help. It's that it couldn't.

Rockets Know Who They Are: Flawed and Dangerous

The Houston Rockets keep rolling with what, so far, has been the most finely tuned, keenly honed one-dimensional approach in the league.

But this top-down commitment to offense-only thinking—masterminded by Mike D'Antoni, signed off on by the front office and executed brilliantly by James Harden—shows holes even in successes like a 107-106 win against the Boston Celtics on Monday.

"From the owner to the general manager to the superstar, we want to play a certain way," D’Antoni told Tim Bontemps of the Washington Post. "Now, okay, that’s what we had in Phoenix, and that’s what we have here. There was always that piece missing [in New York and Los Angeles] where we had a couple people that didn’t want to do it. We tried, compromised, and it still didn’t work."

There is no compromise now.

That much was evident in Harden spearheading the offense with inimitable quickness and deception. He finished with 37 points, eight rebounds and eight assists while goading the Celtics into enough reaches to shoot (and make) 18 free throws.

Houston's all-in mindset was also apparent in its 38 three-point attempts. The total was one over the team's league-leading average of 37 coming in, but it felt low in light of recent events. Just a couple of weeks ago, the Rockets set the all-time NBA record with 50 heaves from long range. (Nobody averaged more than 32 three-point tries last season.)

Perhaps most importantly, we saw role players elevated by the buy-in to D'Antoni's style. Once upon a time, guys like Boris Diaw and Shawn Marion were their best selves under the coach's stewardship. Now, Sam Dekker is showing flashes of brilliance during his first full season. He scored just five points (and made a trey, of course), but was active and skillful and generally unbridled in Houston's system.

B/R's Michael Pina is into that:

Eric Gordon scored 19 points, hitting four threes to lead the Rockets' bench. Montrezl Harrell sprinted up and down the floor and posted a team-high plus-13 in his 18 minutes. Clint Capela feasted on Harden's perfect set ups in Houston's spread attack.

However, Houston's one-way ethos proved predictably imperfect.

The Celtics pushed their way back into the game with a third-quarter run that capitalized on the Rockets' key weakness (the No. 17 defense in the league) and the inherent fickleness of an attack built on long-distance shooting.

Jonathan Feigen of the Houston Chronicle summed it up:



This is the worry with an uncompromising, specifically branded team. Opponents can anticipate tendencies and sell out in making adjustments. Boston, for example, started Jonas Jerebko at power forward, which unleashed a switch-everything defense to stymie Houston's pick-and-roll attack that also created enough offensive space to get the Rockets' jittery defense scrambling.

In practice, stopping Harden and the Rockets is still hard, but there's nothing difficult about figuring out how you're supposed to do it: Switch on D, spread them out on O.

In the end, the best metaphor for Houston's simultaneous strength and vulnerability came in the game's closing sequence: Having staved off Boston's late run with Harden's dagger three and a couple of his signature drawn fouls, Houston's victory was still ultimately flimsy. Had Avery Bradley's late long-range shot been ruled a three instead of a two (it was close), the result might have been different.

And had Al Horford made an uncontested layup on the game's final possession, the Celtics would have won.

The Rockets looked dominant in stretches against a quality foe, and they did it their way. In a league where the failure to establish an identity can be fatal, there's a great deal to be said for the kind of ideological unity this team has.

But when you're a club like Houston, and you fully embrace an imperfect, one-dimensional approach (even when it's probably the best one available to you), you leave a lot to chance.

Jamal Murray: Blurry Curry

If you downgrade the resolution on your browser and squint a little, you could talk yourself into thinking the guy serpentining across the floor in transition and uncorking this smooth step-back triple was actually Stephen Curry.

But it's Jamal Murray, and that should excite those with Denver Nuggets rooting interests—and anyone who appreciates languid, polished, ultra-confident scoring.

Here's another Curry impression:

Murray even shares the two-time MVP's nonchalance after ridiculous shots, as this snippet from Chris Dempsey of the Denver Post proves:

The rookie amassed 22 points (two off his career high) on 8-of-12 shooting during 24 minutes of Denver's 106-98 win over the Philadelphia 76ers—a badly needed rebound from his previous two games in which he scored a combined two points on 1-of-11 shooting.

You might wonder how someone with Murray's smooth handle and instinctive shot-creating talent could ever do anything but pump in 20 points a game. I guess this is as good of a reminder as any that rookies are basically always bad—even the ones that will (eventually) be really good.

Knees Come In Threes

The scares started early when LeBron James was slow to rise after landing awkwardly finishing a lob in the first quarter. He ended up being fine, but then J.R. Smith crumpled to the floor at the end of that opening period, felled by a jarring misstep that torqued his left knee and shelved him for the night.

The news from ESPN.com's Dave McMenamin is mixed, but Smith was in serious pain as he hobbled off the floor:

The Cleveland Cavaliers beat the Toronto Raptors 116-112 anyway, making the season series a 3-0 affair with one more meeting left in April, but the knee issues persisted across the league.

Andrew Bogut suffered a hyperextension of his right knee and didn't return during the Dallas Mavericks' 109-101 loss to the Charlotte Hornets. Then Tony Parker (who was just getting back from a bruised quad) tangled with Matthew Dellavedova on a drive and had to be helped off the floor in the San Antonio Spurs' 97-96 win versus the Milwaukee Bucks.

We have to do something, you guys. The league is richer if everyone's healthy, and the Cavs especially need Smith's spot-up shooting if they're going to repeat as champs. (Let's at least agree to take our shirts off in solidarity for him.)

Maybe it'll send good recuperative vibes.

The Hawks Are Cosmically Doomed

There are a couple of ways to interpret the viciously unholy dunk-of-the-year front-runner Victor Oladipo visited upon the Atlanta Hawks during the Oklahoma City Thunder's 102-99 win on Monday.

Option 1: When it rains, it pours. The Hawks have lost 10 of their last 11 games, and even Paul Millsap's return from a hip injury couldn't prevent Oladipo and the Thunder from keeping them in the loss column. Call it a tough break or an unfortunate coincidence.

Option 2: Atlanta is actually so terrible right now that the universe, constantly in search of balance, is cosmically empowering its opponents, making them as supernaturally good as the Hawks are incomprehensibly bad.

It feels like the second option explains how Oladipo defied several laws of physics on that dunk better than the first.

So let's go with that.

Oh yeah, also, Russell Westbrook notched his sixth consecutive triple-double, finishing with 32 points, 13 rebounds and 12 assists. There's no cosmic force at work there; he just does it all the time now.

The NBA Is Considering Contraction!

Now there's a jazzy attention-grabber, right?

To be clear, there have been no reports to this effect. None.

But this happened in the Washington Wizards' 118-113 win over the Brooklyn Nets, via Kyle Weidie of Truth About It:

And Candace Buckner of the Washington Post relayed this fact:

It's unclear what bet Commissioner Silver lost to prompt his attendance, but he was there. And having watched the above instance of inept silliness alongside several others, well...good luck talking him out of the idea that the league could stand to consolidate talent by eliminating a team or two.

The Nets, at least, were supposed to be bad. Their 5-15 mark on the season is excusable. Washington's 7-12 record (after the win) is far more disappointing, and until that second unit stops hemorrhaging points, it's hard to see how things will improve.

Every Wizards reserve finished with a negative plus-minus, and the bench's overall net rating is the lowest in the league.

Giannis Is The One

Gravity as suggestion rather than law? Check.

Preternatural anticipation and a flair for the dramatic? Yep.

It's settled, and Brewhoop confirms it. Giannis Antetokounmpo is The One:

This works on a lot of levels because the Spurs are absolutely Agent Smith.

Antetokounmpo's Milwaukee Bucks couldn't escape inevitability in this instance, falling 97-96 to the Smiths/Spurs. But San Antonio hasn't lost on the road all season, so there's no shame there.

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Stats courtesy of NBA.com. Accurate through games played Dec. 5.