Charlie Villanueva tried to get in the way of Russell Westbrook and Cameron Payne’s pregame routine: pic.twitter.com/7zhvasINPP
— Royce Young (@royceyoung) April 19, 2016
All season long, Russell Westbrook has been a scoring and triple-double machine, helping lead his Oklahoma City Thunder to the 3rd-best record in the Western Conference and a 1-0 lead in OKC’s opening round series against the Dallas Mavericks.
Outside of that and his acute fashion sense, Russell may be known for nothing more than his pre-game dance routines with Thunder rookie point guard Cameron Payne, who have drawn national attention for their impromptu pre-game two-steps, that include trending dances like the “Hit Them Folks” and the “Nae Nae,” and random variations of other things that don’t have names…yet.
After getting walloped in Game 1, the Mavericks seemed to have a clear agenda in Game 2 tonight, that included getting in the Thunder’s head in an effort to throw them off their game. They began to execute that agenda before tip-off, as forward Charlie Villanueva and another Mavericks player casually interrupted Westbrook and Payne’s dance-off, as if they didn’t have all the space in the world to get around them.
Naturally, Westbrook didn’t respond to kindly to that, and shoved Villanueva first, then his Dallas cohort out of the way to ensure that he and Payne had the space to continue their maneuvers. However, tonight’s game is much, much closer than Game 1 was, so whatever Charlie and Dallas had in mind seems to be holding up, at least for now. Watch the hilarious video clip above.
