The beauty of the NBA playoffs is how players who were at least once amicable toward one another in the regular season become mortal enemies as the grind of playing a single team over the span of two weeks gets to them.
Kelly Oubre Jr. and Delon Wright provide the latest example of this postseason phenomenon.
Oubre threw the first verbal punch after the Wizards' Game 5 loss to the Raptors on Wednesday. The Washington forward mentioned that Game 6 would be "a different story" and then, for some reason, directed an insult at Wright.
"The next game is a different story. We're back at home," Oubre told The Washington Post. Next came this bit of inspiration combined with a touch of an insult: "Just like Delon doesn't play well anywhere else, you know, other than at home. You can kind of chalk it up as the same story."
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Wright did score 18 points off the bench to help the Raptors win in Toronto, but the jab seemed to come out of nowhere as the two players had no prior history.
The Toronto guard initially tried to brush off Oubre's comments, but he couldn't help himself and responded.
Delon, under his breath as he walked off: "I've got a quote ready for (Oubre) after we win."
— Josh Lewenberg (@JLew1050) April 26, 2018
Oubre was unsurprisingly ready to counter, but he took things a bit further than Wright probably expected.
Still, with Kelly being Kelly he didn’t stop there.
— Candace Buckner (@CandaceDBuckner) April 27, 2018
His final comment on Delon Wright: “He can take it very personally but at the end of the day if you want to go to war, I’m the wrong person to go to war against. If I die, I’m going to come back to life and kill you.”
Ignoring the insane train of logic of his last sentence — are we to gather Oubre comes back as a zombie in his own body, or a ghost? — this statement is quite inciting. It should help make Game 6 a must-watch game, and this individual matchup a must-watch battle.