The night just had a weird feel to it from the get go. As the Thunder were playing the Wizards in D.C.–Caligula was addressing the Roman Senate as to the state of the Union. The state of the Union is fairly simple, on February 8th, for the second time in less than month, the U.S. government will most likely shut down again. There’s your state of the union.
But the basketball game was just kind of blah. You had the feeling from early on the Thunder were running on empty and the fumes just weren’t going to be there in the end to make enough plays to beat the Wizards even though they were without their best player in John Wall. It wasn’t like the Wizards really did all that much, they just survived at the end with OKC handing them a win which Scott Brooks was in serious need of. Billy Donovan… Scott Brooks says thank you very much.
The final score was 102-96 and in reality the Thunder still could have won this game in this last minute, but just kind of deflated. And it in no way had anything to do with Andre Roberson not being there because the Wizards for the game struggled from the field and beyond the arc shooting the ball. They almost shot the ball as poorly as the Thunder did in fact.
Just so we’re clear, Alex Abrines played an unimaginable 12:32 and was +9. So, it’s not like I can even blame Billy Donovan for enabling Sam Presti with this whole thing about making the Abrines deal work because it was part of the Harden trade package the Thunder got from the Rockets. Even I can’t do that on my rogue blog.
If you want to blame someone for this loss, it’s pretty much squarely on the shoulders of Russell Westbrook…as in he had a bad night. Bad Little Dude looked worn out to me. All the chest pumping and fuck yous to Joel Embiid on Sunday appeared to have emptied his tank. In what was an otherwise MVP month of January for Westbrook–he pretty much sucked against the Wizards going 5/18 from the field and committing 7 turnovers against a white guy with a name I’m not even familiar with. As a team, the Thunder shot 37.8% from the field and committed 21 turnovers. That will get you beat against the Sacramento Kings or Atlanta Hawks. Storyline.
So what I’m saying is…this was one of those weird nights that while Caligula was addressing the nation Alex Abrines outplayed Russell Westbrook. Too bad Joel Embiid doesn’t read my blog cause he’d be grinning his ass off right now.
Fuck it, the streak is over. That’s the life of an NBA regular season. The Thunder end the month of January at 10-4 which is acceptable. You move on, you get a breathe of fresh air and reset for the month of February.
I mean, let’s be candid here, the NBA minus Golden State doesn’t have a great team per se. And the only reason they have a great team is Jerry West stole Kevin Durant from Sam Presti. What I’m saying here… there’s no reason OKC can’t or shouldn’t be a Top Six team in this league even with the loss of Andre Roberson.
OKC at Denver on Thursday night. The Thunder need to get a win and start another streak. It’s that simple…even if it’s just a mini streak leading into February 6th in Oakland.