No Reggie Jackson, no Andre Drummond, and like the Thunder the Pistons were playing their third game in four nights. It didn’t matter. Detroit cruised to a relatively easy 104-88 win over the Thunder on Monday night.
It was the Thunder’s fourth straight loss. Losses against Golden State, Toronto, and the Clippers aren’t bad losses. But a home loss to the Orlando Magic and a double digit road loss to a Pistons’ team minus their two best players raises some serious concerns. The primary concern being — Russell Westbrook needs some consistent offensive support from Steven Adams and Victor Oladipo on a nightly basis.
Westbrook was Westbrook on Monday night. His line was Westbrookian… 34/15/8. Consider he did this with only 21 shots from the field. Only one problem, he didn’t get much help. Steven Adams scored four points, but was outplayed by Aron Baynes. Victor Oladipo scored nine points, but was outplayed by Kentavious Caldwell Pope. Andre Roberson and Domas Sabonis both had bad nights. Putting it bluntly, not one of the other Thunder starters helped Russell much if at all.
As a team, OKC shot 37.5% from the field and were 5-27 shooting threes.
OKC’s second leading scorer was Jerami Grant with 11 points. Enes Kanter was OKC’s third leading scorer. This simply won’t cut it if OKC aspires to be any type of seeded playoff team come April. Adams and Oladipo were recently extended new contracts because they need to be OKC’s second and third best players on a consistent basis.
In OKC’s first ten games the team played hard. Competed and gave fans some hope. This wasn’t the case last night in Detroit. But then again, OKC lost in Detroit last season on a night when Durant and Ibaka took a rest night off.
The Thunder now stand 6-5 and a better sense of reality of this team has set in perhaps. Clearly, the first pressing issue has to be Russell Westbrook getting some consistent offensive support from Adams and Oladipo. The Thunder will never get consistent offensive support from Andre Roberson because it’s not in is game on a nightly basis. When you had Durant, Westbrook, and Ibaka — his lack of shooting was an issue. Now it’s more than just an issue because teams are completely clogging the middle to take away the Westbrook-Adams pick and roll.
With Durant, Westbrook, and Ibaka, the Thunder could get away with Roberson’s lack of offensive skills. But with this team, not so much.
The Thunder return to game action on Wednesday night to host James Harden and his Rockets. One would expect great games from both Westbrook and Harden. The question is which will get the most help from their teammates.
No one should be shocked or upset with OKC standing at 6-5 eleven games in. Best case scenario with this team is either a four or five seed as presently constructed with everything going well. But if Russell Westbrook can’t get any help from his teammates in road games it’s going to be a long, frustrating season for both Westbrook and Thunder fans alike.
Houston Rockets at the Peake on Wednesday night. No reason to not give James Harden the same reaction they Serge Ibaka. James Harden didn’t so anything wrong. He just wanted his own team to quarterback.