Thunder fans booed early, booed often, some even booed after the game, and others even donned cupcake wear of all various sorts. Sam Presti and Clay Bennett could have dressed as cupcake mascots and it wouldn’t have mattered for one simple reason—Oklahoma City has one all-star, Golden State has four.
The final score read 130-114 and at one point in this game the Thunder found themselves trailing by as many as 26 points, but to the Thunder’s credit they fought hard and whittled the deficit down to 12 points at one juncture early in the fourth period.
But this game was basically decided when Russell Westbrook took his first rest of the game with 1:45 remaining in the first period. The score read 22-22. Mark that down. When Westbrook returned at the 8:31 mark of the second period the Thunder found themselves down by 15 points and the game was essentially over. I hate to pick on Cameron Payne, but he was essentially unplayable in this game and there’s just no way he matches up defensively on Shaun Livingston or Ian Clark. Billy Donovan should have immediately removed Payne and gone with something else like maybe a threesome of Oladipo, Grant, or maybe consider using Huestis a bit next time these two teams meet, but again Cameron Payne was virtually unplayable.
As far the Westbrook-Durant thing, both started slowly but got it together as the uneasiness of the whole night wore off. Westbrook was magnificent with 47 points, 11 rebounds, and 8 assists. He did have 11 turnovers, but given how little support he got from his teammates it’s amazing the Thunder were within 12 points in the fourth period. Other than Oladipo, there wasn’t much offensive support for Westbrook on the night.
Conversely, Durant had more than enough support on the night as the Splash Brothers each tallied 26 points and were a combined 9-19 shooting threes. Compare that with OKC going 6-24 from the field and along with the early run during Westbrook’s first rest those were pretty much the two deciding storylines in this ball game. Durant did have a nice night scoring 34 points on a 12-21 shooting night, but I actually would have picked Steph Curry as the Warrior player of the game as he had a very solid 26 point, 8 rebound, 9 assist night.
OKC just doesn’t have enough three point shooting and overall scoring depth to hang with this Golden State team which features four all-stars in Curry, Durant, Green, and Thompson. It’s a horrible matchup for OKC and made even worse on this night as they got virtually nothing from two of their top six players, with Kanter and Payne not contributing a single point on a night when in reality the Thunder would need something like 30 points combined from these two against this Warriors juggernaut.
As far as the booing of Durant, I expected it and it was about at the level I thought it might be. The shirtless dude named Thor going topless with a huge cupcake adorning his nipples was a bit much for me, but, hey, he’s got a First Amendment just like the rest of us.
I don’t blame people for booing this one game because I as well thought what Durant did in going to the Warriors is one of the most weak dick things I’ve ever seen in sports, but it is what it is. Don’t feel like the lone ranger on this, because every other team in the NBA is going to feel the inequity of this Oakland Super Team once the post season tournament begins.
Sam Presti has some work in front of him if he’s not going to lose his last remaining superstar, namely he needs to get Russell Westbrook a dependable guard who can come off the bench, make some threes, not be a complete defensive mismatch, and hold the fort for fifteen minutes every game.
OKC now stands at 31-24. Without Russell Westbrook, I’d guesstimate this Thunder team would have a mark somewhere around 8-47 without him at this point of the season. I’m hoping Sam Presti has some working ideas heading into the trade deadline.
The Thunder play the Wizards on the road Monday night in D.C. in what should be a tough game against a Wizards team which is playing much better under Scott Brooks than they were the first time the two teams met on Nov. 30th.