Brooklyn Nets in Oklahoma City tonight for a night before Thanksgiving game. This is a bad Brooklyn team at 3-11 in the East and in next to last place only above the once again tanking 76’ers. This is one of those games where OKC needs to be professional. Get the win, work on the defensive side of the ball, get better, and get no one hurt….especially No. 35.
Brooklyn’s core goes something like Brook Lopez, Thaddeus Young, Jarret Jack and Joe Johnson. This is not a great team, but OKC does need to show up and take care of business.
Kevin Durant is back, and with Durant back OKC is only behind Golden State as the league’s most efficient offense. Simply put–Durant cures a lot of ills for OKC on both sides of the ball and makes the game easier for all of his teammates—even Russell Westbrook.
OKC enters tonight at 9-6 and currently as the third seed in West which is exactly where I think they will end the regular season.
Fifteen games into this season and there’s not much I can really bitch about per Billy Donovan except the Morrow situation. This seems to have been corrected so now it comes down to one thing for me—can Billy Donovan and his staff of Monty Williams, Mo Cheeks and Anthony Grant get these guys to buy in on the defensive end like Scott Brooks did during his years in OKC.
People can complain all they want about Brooks, Perkins and Thabo, but at the end of the day to win a championship in the NBA you can’t be a bottom half team defensively in the NBA and win a championship. OKC is currently a bottom half team defensively. Don’t kid yourself either—the main favorites to now win the league–Golden State and Cleveland both play tough defense. These are not just pretty boy teams with Steph and LeBron–they can make stops.
So here’s what I would say about tonight…win the game, lock down defensively and make team defense the focal point of team improvement tonight. Keep moving the ball. Westbrook needs to make sure Ibaka, Waiters, Kanter, and Adams get their comfort zone offensive opportunities. Just get better as a team. Get to 10-6 and enjoy Thanksgiving the right way.