LeBron James versus Paul George is the match-up of the Eastern Conference first round, but James Harden versus Russell Westbrook is unmistakably the choicest cut overall. The two presumptive front runners for the MVP Award – an award which, it should be remembered, has not been decided upon yet – go head to head in the tie of the round. Russell Westbrook and James Harden will face off in a beautiful match-up. It matters not that Patrick Beverley, Trevor Ariza, Andre Roberson and Victor Oladipo will draw far more of the defensive time on the duo than each other – this is about a match-up of two players, their talents, how much they can do for their teams, and their will to win. To win, Houston spreads the floor and lets Harden pull the strings, a barrage of high pick-and-rolls that, when they are hitting their shots, is a fairly unbeatable combination. In accordance with cliché, they live with the three and they die by the three, but so good are they at this facet of the game that they normally live. They yield a rebounding disadvantage in this series to the Thunder (the league’s best rebounding team this season), yet the Rockets can, via Ryan Anderson, stretch the floor to counter this. A well spaced floor with good ball movement will open up plenty of three point looks, no matter how good at scrambling the opposing defense is. In a sense, Oklahoma City tries to do much the same except without the luxury of spacing. The worst three point team in the league got by hugely, if not quite entirely, due to the herculean efforts of Westbrook. He achieved the until-recently-considered-extremely-unlikely feat of averaging a triple-double for the season, and did so while leading the league in scoring. They were points-heavy triple-doubles, and any over-scrutiny of his rebounding numbers, enormous turnovers or staggering usage rate is a ridiculous distraction from the brilliance and enormity of his achievements. He did what he had to do, nightly, for 82 games.