Team Lebron in Oklahoma City this afternoon for the ABC national telecast game. Pretty much agreed by most there are four teams with a chance to win the NBA championship with OKC and the Cavs being two of the four teams.
Cleveland won the first encounter this season by a 104-100 count in a very competitive game where Billy Donovan let his team down by not staggering Durant and Westbrook sitting to start the fourth period. It was disastrous for OKC as Cleveland predictably went on a spurt and the game changed. Donovan did the same thing Friday night in the home loss to Indiana. Not sure what part of this Billy Donovan is struggling to grasp.
Cleveland comes in with a new head coach in Tyronn Lue after the LeBron dismissal of David Blatt for obvious reasons. Namely, wtf reason is there to have Kevin Love on your team if you’re not going use him properly. Plus, he wants the Cavs to play a more up tempo style of play which should be conducive to the overall Cavs roster. So–all in all probably a wise move by LeBron to make the coaching change.
OKC comes in at 40-15 on the heels of a bitterly disappointing home loss to the Indiana Pacers. Same old bug-a-boos for the Thunder. Shaky perimeter defense and a lack of offensive execution coming down the stretch, plus not a great fourth period of coaching by Donovan. He didn’t stagger his subs starting the fourth, and I really feel like he burned OKC’s final timeout prematurely. Keep the timeout in your pocket and have it for your last timeout with 5.1 seconds left and a chance to send the game into overtime. I can’t believe he wasn’t even slightly taken to task for this by the apparently scared to death OKC local media.
Not a huge Bill Simmons fan, other than his Book of Basketball, but maybe he’s right in calling the OKC media the the Prestettes. I mean, c’mon, do we have anyone ever asking even a remotely tough question in the fear the Thunder may banish all and leave Thunder coverage exclusively to be handled by Nick Gallo. That’s why you need an underground and it’s why ‘some’ of what Jim Traber does is actually necessary.
Anyway, same old story for OKC today. Namely, Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook could use some help. I hate beating this to death, but guys like Ibaka, Adams, Kanter, Waiters, Payne, Singler and Morrow can’t just go invisible. They have to competitively engage. They have to make an imprint on the game.
It will be interesting to see if Randy Foye sees any minutes in this game if Dion Waiters can’t contribute any offense whatsoever.
LeBron has held a very dominant edge over Durant and Westbrook so far into their respective careers. To me this is a fairly huge game for OKC just to show if OKC can really be counted as a serious championship contender going beyond just the fact Durant and Westbrook wear Thunder blue.
Can’t wait. Going to a chilli-footlong Thunder watch party with Sonic onion rings and everything. To date, OKC is a combined 1-2 against Golden State, San Antonio, and Cleveland. Next seven days should reveal a little more if OKC is a pretender or a contender.