It was a night of hope for the once last place Dallas Mavs as they easily dispatched of the road reeling OKC Thunder by a score of 104-89 on Sunday night inside American Airlines Arena. Don’t look now, but the Mavs are now but two games out of the eighth place seed in the West after battling their way back from a horrendous start of this season.
Dirk started at center and it in no way hampered the Mavs as Billy Donovan never really seemed to figure things out against one of the best coaches in the NBA business who goes by the name of Rick Carlisle. For Dirk it was a night when he scored 18 points and added 12 rebounds. But more importantly, Dirk is now 20 points away from becoming the sixth player in NBA history to score 30,000 points in a career. I’ve always liked Dirk and as an NBA fan appreciated his loyalty to his city and to Mark Cuban. It’s rare. We don’t see all that much of this in any pro sports nowadays, so I felt the need to highlight Dirk rather than the abysmal playing and coaching performances by the Thunder on Sunday night. The Mavs next three games are in Dallas, so it’s nice that he’s going to set the mark in front of his home fans. Congrats, Dirk. You’ll forever be my favorite German power forward.
Now to the Thunder. They were horrific both on the floor and on the bench. OKC was completely outclassed in every regard of this basketball game. Heart, effort, execution, smarts, poise, …everything. At one point in this game OKC trailed 81-54 or something like that against a team which started a thirty-nine year old power forward as center. Think about that. For those who to date have maintained Billy Donovan has a coaching flexibility which Scott Brooks never had you might want to burn the tape of this game and pretend it didn’t happen.
Let’s start with this. Victor Oladipo missed his sixth straight game due to mysterious back spasms. In turn, the Thunder have now lost seven road games in a row dating back to January 25th when the Thunder won in New Orleans. The Thunder are now 12-20 and once again are headed absolutely nowhere except the 7th seed in the West and a first round exit in the playoffs.
That feel good, warm glowy feeling after the Utah home win has now become the cold reality that this team doesn’t have the maturity to win on the road in situations which require some mental toughness and smarts. The only thing possibly worse than the Thunders’ performance was the one which was given by Brian Davis and Michael Cage doing the Fox telecast. I usually let this pass because it’s a homer broadcast by design, but on this night their degrees of brutality on the call had to have set some sort of Thunder mark for inane homerness. The sound went off in the second period in this one for me, came back on briefly in the disastrous third period, and never returned for the remainder of this game.
Russell Westbrook struggled in this game. It wasn’t that his line of 29 points, 6 rebounds, and 5 assists was awful, it’s more to the point he became as unhinged as Donald Trump on a tweetstorm in the third period. Westbrook suffered both a technical and a Flagrant I in the period and the game was essentially over.
But I can’t really blame Westbrook because I would think he’s tired of not getting enough help from his teammates–especially those who start. Sabonis, Roberson, and Abrines went a combined 2-11 from the field and Abrines did not score a point. More to the point the most important stat in this game was the fact OKC as a team shot a wretched 2-22 from beyond the three line. I’m not even sure that gets the Thunder a win on the road against the Russian owned Brooklyn Nets who by the way are the Thunder’s next road opponent on March 14th. Don’t think for a second I won’t be throwing around Mikhail Prokhorov Russian spy innuendo stories leading into that game. I might even start tonight.
But on this night in this Year of Westbrook, it was telling that a Curry not named Steph, but rather named Seth torched the Thunder along with Dirk.
OKC drops to 35-28 and is now once again four games back of the Utah Jazz in the Northwest. But to be fair, we now know what March and beyond holds for this Thunder team and it’s not the answer we were hoping for after the win over Utah.
The Portland Trailblazers are in town on Tuesday and we hope Victor Oladipo is somewhere around to be seen.
One of the greatest MVP performances I’ve seen in the NBA Playoffs. Dirk 2011.