What a downer of a Tuesday night schedule of Thunder basketball on tap. The injury excuse Thunder who now have Little Nick Gallo and Michael Cage citing the injury lost game stat of the very soft Thunder at somewhere around 300- 400 games lost to injury makes me smile.
I think what they must be doing in their paternal effort to be the best Little League mothers in Oklahoma is this…they’re obviously counting the games lost by rookie Thomas Sorber and Nicola Topic as games lost.
On my injury metric of games lost to injury…I only count games lost to injury of players in the top ten of their roster entering the regular season. Unlike LNG and Michael Cage…. I don’t count players in the G-League, players from the Durant-Westbrook years, and games lost to injury when the team was still playing in Seattle.
The Thunder have now lost back to back games at home to the tanking Indiana Pacers and the pretty good Toronto Raptors. Shai had 47 points against a tanking, injury decimated Indiana team and yet his soft teammates still found a way to lose this game. Then the Thunder lost at home to a decent Toronto team on Sunday evening.
I’m taking back my endorsement of Chet being named to the All-Star team. For a dude who has missed as many games in his young NBA career and was just given a max contract—I find his on court indifference on various nights vexing. For such a group of young guys excluding Shai, Lu, and Kenrich to be this hurt and this unable to go so often…I have to write this on my blog even though I’ve been trying my best not to be this way with the defending champs on my blog this season.
Are the other guys excluding these three just the biggest collection of FILL IN THE BLANK —-ies ever assembled on an NBA roster? Again…I’m glad these guys aren’t playing in the NFL or NHL. This is what happens when you baby players to this extent like the Thunder baby and shield their players.
I mean…this is the youngest roster in the league. Injuries generally happen to old players like LeBron, Steph, Jimmy Butler, and Kevin Durant. Westbrook and Durant never missed games like this in the early portion of their careers. Even out of shape James Harden never missed this many games.
If I were Coach Mark tonight, I’d sit Shai and then see if there’s any hubris or accountability on this roster minus Shai, Lu, and Kenrich. Sit Shai and let’s if these guys are the worldbeaters the Thunder media group makes them out to be. The Pelicans are horrible. Let’s see what we’ve got here.
I think it would be interesting. Let’s see what Chet has and these greats have working for them tonight versus the mighty Pelicans. OKC is still 5.5 games up for the No. 1 overall seed. Give Shai the night off and let’s see what happens.
On the Kate Hudson question above, her nomination for an Oscar made me think of her Oscar nominated role in Almost Famous which made her famous until she made too many bad chick flicks. Nice to see Kate Hudson back in a good role with an Oscar nomination to boot. Good for her.
Mike J