After Round 2, One N.B.A. Favorite Still Stands After the first game of the playoffs, right before Russell Westbrook's knee went pop and changed the Oklahoma City Thunder's outlook to mostly cloudy with a chance of calamity, the Miami Heat and the Thunder could have penciled themselves in for a rematch of last year's N.B.A. finals. Who was going to beat these two, loaded with star players and confidence? They played with that "What, us worry?" attitude, knowing there was always a switch somewhere they could flip and heroics would just happen. Bill Waugh/Reuters Kevin Durant of the Thunder took a charge against the Grizzlies on Wednesday night in a playoff game Oklahoma City lost. Memphis will play in the Western Conference final. Do not remind a Thunder fan of all that today, after Westbrook and the playoffs were pulled out from under them by the "Who are these guys?" Grizzlies. Sure, Oklahoma City had prevailed in a hairier-than-it-should-have-been first-round series with Houston, but Memphis took real playoff basketball to the second round (the kind measured in bruises) and probably mercifully ended Oklahoma City's hopes. By the time Wednesday night's Game 5 rolled around, the Thunder were low on everything - energy, players, offense - and tried to make a game of it, as Berry Tramel writes in The Oklahoman, but could not. Kevin Durant's splendid season ended in a thud as everyone scrambled to understand how Memphis went from the team dumping Rudy Gay's contract to a Western Conference finalist. It turns out the Grizzlies made a lot of risky moves that now look brilliant, as Ramona Shelburne writes on ESPN.com, and now everyone has to wonder if they have the fortitude to bludgeon the Heat out of the playoffs. Answer: probably not, but everyone will debate it anyway. The only thing anyone knows is that in the next round Tony Allen would be wise to keep his shirt on. The Heat have not veered off their expected trajectory, but they have made a nettlesome habit out of making everything look a little harder than it should. There was almost no chance a barely-breathing Bulls team was going to win Game 5 Wednesday night, but, bizarrely, the Heat needed a dunk from Norris Cole to put them over the top, so everyone could go back to fixating on Dwyane Wade's pesky knee. That obsession made Wade's energetic performance seem particularly heroic, writes Greg Cote in The Miami Herald, and it seems as if Wade will play his usual important role while everyone stares at his knee brace, Michael Wallace writes on ESPN.com. Such is the pre-eminence of the Heat that the playoffs are really only getting started now, writes Dave Hyde in The Sun-Sentinel. The Bulls" final dismissal does save us from the endless Derrick Rose return saga, which Jon Greenberg laments on ESPN.com nearly swallowed the entire season to no good end. What else could make the end of the Bulls" season feel like a relief to many of their fans, writes Rick Telander in The Chicago Sun-Times, even as they wonder what a murky future holds. Chicago's N.B.A. fans might want to consider shuffling over to the N.H.L. playoffs, where the Blackhawks" bandwagon, already bulging, is the place to be. In fact, expansion will definitely be needed after Wednesday night's 4-1 win over the hated Red Wings, in which only a spectacular performance from Detroit goalie Jimmy Howard kept the score from being even worse, as John Niyo writes in The Detroit News. That sound you hear emanating from Detroit is Red Wings fans saying, "Yikes!" after the Blackhawks outshot the Wings, 42-21, and generally skated around like children on a freshly frozen pond, Drew Sharp writes in The Detroit Free Press. Yes, the top-seeded Blackhawks found that higher gear they were looking for after a sleepy first round, Scott Powers writes on ESPN.com. The hockey was dazzling, if you like skating and passing and skill and grace, all of which will be hard to find in the Eastern Conference series kicking off Thursday night between the Rangers and the Bruins. As Sarah Kwak writes on SI.com, this series will be rugged (translation: borderline unwatchable). The other sports news of the day carried little playoff intensity, although baseball fans certainly took notice of Zack Greinke's solid return for the Dodgers, as Ken Rosenthal writes on Foxsports.com, which may quiet some of the howling that has accompanied a giant payroll sinking to last place in the National League West, as Jon Heyman writes on CBSSports.com. N.F.L. fans can occupy themselves puzzling over the strange career of linebacker Rolando McClain, Jason Cole writes on Yahoo.com, after he stunned the Ravens by retiring abruptly at age 23. And if you have any affinity for women's basketball, there was the delightful sight Wednesday of Brittney Griner getting a tutorial on shooting the sky hook from none other than Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who visited the Phoenix Mercury's practice for the special lesson. That was far more unexpected than anything that happened in the N.B.A. playoffs. Perhaps the Thunder will be signing up for sky hook lessons now, too. They do have some extra time on their hands.