As the Thunder start playing more and more teams other than Phoenix and Atlanta the reality of this team with Billy Donovan coaching them appears to be surfacing. With the schedule now littered with decent basketball teams the Thunder can no longer feast exclusively on bad teams. A team’s true character will manifest itself as each week gets tougher and tougher. If you want to see tough go google the Thunder’s last 14 regular season games of the season. Pretty tough. Like you hope the Thunder make the playoffs… tough.
On Friday night in my soon to be secondary homeland of Denver–a Nugget team without Paul Milsap, without Will Barton, without Gary Harris, without Isiah Thomas, and without rookie Michael Porter basically toyed with a healthy Thunder team for a 109-98 win. Nikola Jokic and Jaamal Murray led a Nugget team which pretty much made plays when they needed them as they now hold a 2-0 season series lead over the Thunder.
I have no idea what Billy Donovan is doing. He needs three point scoring in the worst imaginable way and yet the three dudes who beginning the season who were to provide this took but five combined shots in over fifty minutes of playing time on Friday. Patrick Patterson, Alex Abrines, and Terrance Ferguson played plenty of rotational minutes, but for some reason I cannot decipher Abrines and Ferguson took a combined two shots. Two shots. And this after the game where Billy Donovan ran a last second play which had Abrines shooting for the game in New Orleans. Both Abrines and Ferguson didn’t score on Friday night while Patterson hit one three.
Paul George and Steven Adams kept the Thunder in the game with solid offensive games. PG scored 32 points while Steven double doubled with a 20, 12 night. Jerami Grant and Dennis Schroder struggled. Russell Westbrook was once again semi-awful going 5-15 from the field and then looking foolish at the end losing his composure with Jaamal Murray
If you want a sign of how poor Westbrook was on the night…consider he only got to the free throw two times…TWO TIMES. If that doesn’t send up a flare I don’t know what would. Maybe he’s just worn out from the twins. Having three young children all the sudden isn’t the easiest thing. I have no idea. We don’t even see Wild Thing anymore… something must be up. Shit…even seeing Wild Thing at this point would be good versus Russell the Zombie.
The Thunder were brutal from the line once again going 17-29 from the free throwline. 17-29. And without Andre Roberson. Are you kidding? High school team don’t do this.
OKC managed but 14 assists to 13 turnovers and for the second straight game and got beaten on the boards.
I’m not going to go crazy on here, it serves no purpose given the turbulent times our Republic finds itself in at the present. Another one quit in Caligula’s inner circle this morning with Sec. of Interior leaving for proposing a fracking scheme on Mount Rushmore. Just kidding…kind of.
So, I guess in this game between the Thunder and my new secondary homeland of Denver…there was no way I could lose.
Billy Donovan only wishes he could make that claim.
Patrick Beverly and the Clips in OKC tonight to face the 17-10 Thunder.