Although the Thunder still have one regular-season game remaining against the Los Angeles Clippers on Friday, the team can safely begin scouting the Houston Rockets.
By virtue of their dramatic victory over the Miami Heat on Wednesday night, the Thunder assured themselves a matchup with the Rockets in the first round. All that’s left to be determined at this point is which team will be the fifth seed and which will be fourth.
The other thing that’s left to be determined, though, is whether Russell Westbrook will be available to play for Houston.
An MRI taken earlier this week revealed that Westbrook suffered a strained right quad and, as a precaution, the team ruled him out for its final regular-season contest on Friday.
On Thursday, Jonathan Feigen of the Houston Chronicle reported that the Rockets expect that Westbrook will “be out for the first few games of next week’s playoff series and possibly longer.”
The news comes as an obvious disappointment for those who looked forward to the drama of Westbrook and Chris Paul meeting one another in a playoff series that would see the players clashing with the teams that traded them just last summer.
ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski chimed in on Feigen’s report, essentially offering that the ferocity with which Westbrook plays makes the injury a tough scenario.
At this point, the Rockets are not ruling Westbrook out for any extended period of time, only offering that updates will be given on his status as necessary.
Although the schedule for the series hasn’t been announced yet, the 2020 NBA Playoffs are set to begin Aug. 17, meaning that the former MVP will have had at least a few days to recuperate before the series between his current team and former team tips off.
Anyone who knows Westbrook knows that he’ll do whatever he can to get back on the court, but at this point, it’s no slam dunk.
