Without starters Carmelo Anthony and Steven Adams, the Thunder were missing two key clogs of their starting five inside Chesapeake Energy Arena on Sunday night. But it didn’t matter as Jerami Grant and Dakari Johnson started in place of them and did well enough for the Thunder to beat the dumpster fire Mavs easily by a count of 112-99.
It’s sad seeing presidential aspirant Mark Cuban’s Mavs this bad, but when you’ve lost by eight to the equally woeful Sacramento Kings earlier in the week—you need to take care of business and continue your team climb out of the darkness.
And climbing out of the darkness is exactly what OKC is doing here after falling to 4-7 to Denver in a loss so painful Paul George had to say something to his other two stars on this OKC mini Super Team. Depending on what you think Paul George did or didn’t say—I’m sticking with my original premise that he looked at Russell and said, “If I don’t ever touch the fucking ball…I can’t help you with any of these teams, let alone Cupcake.”
I’m fairly certain Tramel, Royce Young, and Bret Dawson won’t write it up like this with language as such, but then again they never played sports at John Marshall and don’t have NBA-DNA coursing in their veins like I do.
Since Russell apparently got the message that, yes… indeed Paul George was acquired this summer for Oladipo and Sabonis these Thunder are 2-0 and at 6-7 only one game removed from being .500 after a wobbly losing streak of four games.
Ever since Paul George let it be known he likes to get super star touches just like Cupcake did during his time here… PG has been brilliant in back to back games going for 42 and 37 points versus the Clippers and Cuban’s horrific Mavs.
Paul George has been brilliant in back to back games in filling the Durant role with a more blue collar version of what Durant used to provide for this Thunder franchise before Draymond Green convinced him sometime before Game 6 he should go ahead and become a Warrior for life.
So, here’s the thing, even when Carmelo rejoins the lineup from his sore back woes, it should be Paul George getting his twenty shots every night for two simple reasons…he’s younger and is a better basketball player still in his prime.
The Thunder host the Chicago Bulls on Wednesday night and the Bulls aren’t very good. If the Thunder can take of business and climb another couple of inches out of the darkness they will be 7-7 heading into a Friday night road game in San Antonio. But we’ve been here before with this Thunder team…so let’s see what they do with the Bulls first.
But for sure we do know this after Games No. 12 and 13….when Russell gets Paul George into the flow and keeps him in the flow—-it doesn’t look all that different from Westbrook and Durant.