I held off writing a recap on OKC’s tough 100-95 meltdown loss against the Spurs on Friday night in Oklahoma City because I wanted to make sure I didn’t overreact one way or another. When a home team blows a 21 point lead it’s an alarming thing, but really when you think about it in this case it wasn’t.
What this game reveals is just basically the truth, absent Russell Westbrook, this team is a very young NBA team which at times struggles mightily to not get in its own way. There’s a reason San Antonio is a 58 win team and OKC is a 43 win team, namely the Spurs have better, older, and smarter players who don’t beat themselves. That’s pretty much it.
As the Spurs were closing this game three mental gaffes stand out to me separate of multiple defensive breakdowns in the fourth quarter. 1 Enes Kanter was in the wrong spot on an in bounds pass and Westbrook had to burn a valuable timeout. 2 Victor Oladipo had his foot on the boundary line when Westbrook found him for a wide open three late in the game. 3 On the game’s biggest play, Doug McDermott took an and one on Kahwi Leonard which basically sealed this loss for Oklahoma City. These are just little things which seasoned, smart NBA players don’t do. These things can’t happen. But then again, usually Russell Westbrook doesn’t get stoned by LaMarcus Aldridge at the rim either. Westbrook can’t always bail these guys out.
Let’s be even more brutally candid, OKC will close out this regular season a combined 2-9 against Golden State, San Antonio, and Houston. Truth hurts, Russell Westbrook can only do so much.
With seven regular season games remaining, OKC is 43-32, and despite what Mark Cuban says–Russell Westbrook is a superstar, he’s just a superstar without a second support player on this roster who shows up every night. You might notice, Golden State is on a current ten game winning streak with Durant still sitting. Tell me what that says about the state of these two respective rosters. Seriously.
Westbrook garnered his 39th triple double on Friday versus the Spurs. His line was 32 points, 15 rebound, and 12 assists. Westbrook did everything he could during the stretch run to distribute the ball to his teammates, but the simple truth is his teammates aren’t good enough on most nights to close the deal. Westbrook has Victor Oladipo, Steven Adams, and Enes Kanter while an injured Kevin Durant has Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, and Draymond Green. See my point?
But it is what it is and this afternoon in Oklahoma City–Westbrook goes after his 40th triple double of the season against a Charlotte team who’s mascot name is I think the Bobcats or is it the Hornets.
This season has been very clear for the most part, it’s Russell Westbrook’s season and the hope that some of his teammates will grow from the experience and get better in the process.
I thought about going with Billy Donovan’s post game comments, but they were just coach speak. At some point, he has to say, ‘these other guys have to step the fuck up.’ But, of course, he’s probably already done that behind closed doors on multiple occasions. Russell was very calm with his post game comments. Trump should only be so composed. BTW, I’ll get back to Billy Bush’s foreplay coach on Tuesday. Also, after having two telephone rant conversations with U.S. Senator James Lankford’s office, I received a very nice two page letter yesterday. I was pleasantly surprised to say the least. So there might be some hope in that regard.
James Lankford going after the Russians and our village idiot president. Lankford has a very nice, articulate voice. It doesn’t have that normal Okie twang. I don’t have the Okie twang either. We have that in common–so there’s that. You know how I love this clip from Gorky Park.