What a Sunday night of NBA basketball. I watched about ten minutes of the Thunder’s predictable loss to the injury decimated Denver Nuggets. This was prime time tanking at its best. In fact I would almost call this point shaving in the last two minutes.
With the Thunder very much in position to actually win this game… for some reason Jeremiah Robinson-Earl threw up two widly errant threes and then Shai Gilgeous-Alexander missed badly on an uncontested layup.
Of all the Thunder endings I’ve forced myself to watch this season…this might have been the most eggrious ninety seconds to date. I don’t even at this point know why Vegas would even carry betting lines on Thunder games after last night.
And those fans….bless their Donald Trump-Proud Boy loving hearts. They actually stood up in unison cheering those last two minutes as if the Thunder were going to win this game.
No, no, no. What the Thunder are getting ready to do in this second half of the season is potentially play some of the worst NBA basketball in memory in the quest to somehow land Paulo Banchero and by the NBA’s collective baraginning agreement force him to play in Oklahoma City for the subsequent eight or nine years.
The Thunder have now lost four games in a row and stand at 13-26 as the No. 14 seed in the West. But more importantly from my vantage…it doesn’t appear Shai is all that fired up about playing as of late.
Then there was Klay’s return on the Bay. The building was full forty-five minutes in advance of tip to honor Klay Thompson. Golden State fans are different than OKC fans…they actually cheer their iconic stars rather than boo them for basiclly fulfilling their contractual obligation, helping the city, and taking them on a decade long fantasy dream ride.
This isn’t me being snarky on my blog. This is me telling these Thunder fans who still boo Durant how they’re viewed by the rest of the league.
Klay played twenty minutes and actually looked better than I thought he would as far as mobility and lateral movement. His line was impressive considering how long its been since he’s played an NBA game.
17 points, 3 rebounds, 2 assists, 1 block shot, and 1 deflection, -2….plus a snarl that I don’t remember him showing as much in the past.
I was impressed. I wasn’t even sure Klay would be a contributor this season, but if they just ride the throttle slowly on his return…I could easily after last night see Klay being a 25 minute a game type of guy with Steve Kerr monitoring his minutes in a very smart fashion.
The Splash Brothers are back and if Klay can just ease into this then I would say the Phoenix Suns have another issue on their plate come playoff time.
I was interested watching Steve Kerr hand out minutes with Klay back and Draymond Green out. Steve Kerr sat both his rookies in Johnny Kuminga and Moses Moody and then everybody else played their minutes for the most part.
I would guess Kerr is going to sit Klay on back to backs and on other schedule stress points in the season…so I think the very deep Warriors will be able to rest not only Klay, but Steph as this season winds into mid March.
Think about this though…Golden State is probably going to be the No. 1 seed in the West without basically playing James Wiseman, Johnny Kuminga, and Moses Moody. That’s scary for the rest of the league looking into the future.
Plus…if the Warriors have to face LeBron..they’d have twelve quality fouls between Iggy and Johnny Kuminga to throw at LeBron’s aging body.
It was basically a tale of two cities last night in Oklahoma City and San Francisco and how each have evolved since Game 6 of the 2016 Western Conference Finals.