Durant responds

How anyone could dislike Kevin Durant is beyond me. As I said yesterday, he's done nothing but conduct himself with class his entire basketball career.

And even with Phil Jackson in his face, he's not changing that.

I don’t disrespect nobody in this league. I respect every coach, every player, everybody. I never say anything bad about anybody else or question why they do this or do that. So for them to say that about me, I don’t even want to use no foul language.

If the refs pay attention to that and change how they call things because of that, that’s terrible. That’s terrible to the game of basketball and to us. If that happens, then (coach) Scotty (Brooks) could talk, too. Or any other coach could talk, too, just so the refs could switch everything up. But I doubt they do that. They’re smarter than that, and they have more skills than that as refs.

Impressive. It may have been better just to ignore Jackson's pre-complaining, but this way the refs have to decide whether to let Phil's subtle mind games affect them or not. So that's nice.

What would be even nicer is the Thunder beating the Lakers in the first round. The problem is, Oklahoma City doesn't have the ability to deal with Bynum/Odom/Gasol (but name a team that can), or I'd really feel they had a chance.

On that note, look for a playoff preview tomorrow.