The rookie guard from Australia joined elite company with his 18 point, 10 assist game versus the Lakers last night. He became the second youngest player in NBA history to record 10 assists in a game.
The youngest to cross that threshold was LeBron James.
Josh and Shai seem to be meshing pretty well as the Thunder’s guard tandem. Josh being the primary elite ball handler and Shai being the elite scorer.
You kind of see roles starting to be defined between the two. Team building is fun.
The late pick and roll basket with Josh hitting Derrick Favors was a pure thing of basketball beauty.
Just a beautiful basketball play. Maybe a future defining play for the Thunder.
The separation of player tiers is starting to manifest itself with Shai, Josh, Darius Bazely, Lu Dort, Mike Muscala, Kenrich Favors, and Derrick Favors composing a decent first seven players.
Isaiah Roby had his best game of the season by far, but it was with him being on the floor for the most part separate from Poku, JRE, and Tre Mann.
Coach D in these last three games has been much better at not putting horrible combinations out on the floor at the same time.
One game is one game and this team is still going to lose a bunch of games, but to me at least you can start to see the beginnings of some team building for next season.
You could ‘almost’ say Shai and Josh are the first two star pieces of a Big Three player core for the Thunder’s future.
So let’s visualize the Milwaukee Bucks for just a second. The Bucks third core piece turned out to be Khris Middleton who was a second round pick.
Maybe make sure the third star knows he’s a third star type so you don’t repeat the Harden situation. Most championship teams know from within who’s the 1, who’s the 2, who’s the 3, and who are the role players.
My question to Sam Presti would be with all those draft picks you have why don’t you just let Coach D coach the team this season like a legit basketball team and find your third piece either through a trade or mid-first round pick which could be what the Clippers’ pick turns into depending on Kawhi’s return.
Why not let the team play legit basketball with legit rotations and hedge with the Clipper pick?
Anyway…great games by both Shai and Josh last night with the role players doing their jobs as well in coming back from a historic 26 point deficit.
I’m contemplating inverting Shai and Russell on my Thirty Player Pyramid if Shai’s game keeps trending in the next two weeks.
Here’s my suggestion to Adam Silver as a possible remedy to NBA tanking… why not make the GM’s of every tanking NBA team make themselves available to questions with the head coach at every postgame presser?