David Williams: Catching up with the national buzz on the Griz-Thunder series

Pretty good series, huh? Pretty good national buzz, too.

Here's a sampling of what the national media types were writing, after the Grizzlies beat the Thunder, 100-99, Tuesday night in the fourth straight overtime game of the series.

ESPN.com's Brian Windhorst went all Faulkner with a 68-word sentence to sum up what we'd all seen:

This one had everything: the Grizzlies' seemingly pathological refusal to hold a fourth-quarter lead, including allowing another four-point play; Allen playing his normal role as the merchant of chaos; the endless paradox that is the Russell Westbrook experience; official Joey Crawford snapping in the final seconds; and Kevin Durant wading further toward the edge of a legacy-impacting abyss and doing so with an outrageous passivity.

Nicely done, Brian Windhorst. I say that as a fan of long sentences, just generally. And anyway, how could you capture that game, with its wild swoops and mad turns, its brilliant plays and bungled ones, with one word less?

There was, as you'd guess, a fair amount of national fascination over the Joey Crawford incident -- explored in detail by our Ronald Tillery in his Griz Insider -- in which referee Crawford took the ball from Durant as he was about to shoot a late-overtime free throw with the Thunder down a point. Crawford then went over to berate the crew at the scorer's table. Durant eventually missed the foul shot -- his third FT miss of the game -- and OKC lost, yep, by a point.

Windhorst called it a "mild controversy," Durant said "I don't know what happened but I've got to make that free throw," and at Grantland, the trio of netw3rk, Danny Chau and Robert Mays wrote:

Now, of course, it would be ridiculous to believe in a causality linkage between Crawford wresting the ball from an 87 percent free throw shooter who was settling into a shooting motion and that shooter subsequently missing a game-tying free throw. That is insane. The Thunder offense is rudimentary. The Grizzlies have the defensive presence of two hands gripping you roughly by the lapels. Russell Westbrook shot 10-of-31. 10 OF 31. Mike Miller hit five 3-pointers, including two in overtime. The Thunder lost because of those things, not because of Crawford.

SI.com's Rob Mahoney analyzed the game but also took a moment to simply marvel at it -- at the whole series, really. He called it "wonderful, riveting, excruciating basketball between two perfectly matched teams. The only shame is that it's nearly through."

That's nearly, as in the Grizzlies can end the thing with a Game 6 victory Thursday night in FedExForum. Failing that, it will end with a Game 7 Saturday in OKC.

As for this specific Griz victory, Mahoney wrote:

It wasn't pretty and it very nearly ended in defeat, though there's nonetheless something admirable in the way that Memphis keeps its cool following every Thunder stampede.

That's a little long to put on a growl towel, but it's a spot-on summation of these Grizzlies, wouldn't you say?