Houston Rockets 118 — Oklahoma City Thunder 110
For the 13th time this NBA season, the start-studded OKC Thunder lost the fourth period and the game. Stunningly, OKC leads the entire NBA in this category with two of the league’s four best players on their team.
But I’m not even sure anyone should be writing recaps on the Thunder down the stretch of this regular season as it appears the team and Thunder organization feel like they turned some sort of corner winning eight games in a row before unilaterally ending their best stretch of basketball in two seasons by not playing Durant and Ibaka against Reggie Jackson and the Pistons.
Three games in a row have now been stinkers with flashes of the mentally lazy, entitled basketball which has plagued the Thunder at times this season.
The same things which it appeared OKC had worked thru are now back in full view again. Harden going off for 41 points. The Rockets as a whole scoring 38 in the fourth. Westbrook with 8 turnovers, Durant with 6. As a team 19 assists to 21 turnovers. Ugly basketball which screams ‘we don’t care’.
So with five games left in this regular season I’m not sure any of us blogging about the Thunder should be writing all that much. Maybe they’re rope-a-doping the Warriors and Spurs into a sense of false complacency. Only problem with that though is guy named LeBron has basically owned them and will be waiting for them if they somehow do basketball’s version of Miracle by winning eight games in successive series against the Spurs and Warriors.
My advice would have been to work hard down the stretch and actually try to become a better basketball team. So much for that. Five games left against Denver, Portland, Sacrament, Lakers, and then the Spurs on closing night.
Thunder are 53-24 and none of these games mean anything at this point to a team which quite frankly has been the most underachieving team in the entire NBA for their almost four year body of work since the NBA Finals season.
Their doesn’t appear to be much hunger. Doesn’t appear to be a team with a mission or a desire to get better. Just a team which pretty much does what it did through the course of the Scott Brooks era, namely hope Durant and Westbrook are enough to win games against most of the teams in the league.
Mike Jackson