The Thunder lost a game tonight in Chicago by a score of 114-112 against a team which fired its college coach this past Monday. Fred Hoiberg was a fine coach at Iowa State. But what I would say to Fred Hoiberg is know your wheelhouse, buddy. The Chicago Bulls aren’t the Iowa State Cyclones. The NBA isn’t the Big 12.
Without Hoiberg this young Bulls team which is in complete rebuild scored 70 first half points against a Thunder team which for the second straight game loafed through a first half against a bad team.
Let’s cut this even clearer for those who occasionally are interested in the truth. The Thunder are now 13-1 against teams with a record of below .500. The flip side is they’re 3-7 versus teams above the .500 barrier with wins against the Warriors, the Clippers, and the Pistons. Only one of these three teams will be playing basketball beyond the first round of the NBA Playoffs come April. Take a guess which team that will be. Hint…it will be the team with Steph Curry and Klay Thompson.
How can you as any serious type of contender go into Chicago and give up 70 points in a first half and commit 23 turnovers which leads to 28 points for the Bulls.
You want to know how you can do this?
You do this when your point guard reverts back to YMCA U10 rec league decision making mode and makes decisions with the ball which I will not even go into on here. I just can’t. It does very bad things to me to watch basketball played at this level with so much money being payed out for this type of bullshit.
This isn’t changing.
Russell Westbrook has an addiction problem. In this case the addition is he enjoys playing stupid basketball at just the wrong times. I feel like such a shit as a human writing this, but it’s the truth.
For the second straight game Billy Donovan dialed up a beautiful play to get Paul George a clean look at the end. Only this time the ball veered just right.
It should never have come to that. This Chicago team isn’t even nearly as good as the Brooklyn team the Thunder escaped from on Wednesday.
It’s not me knee jerking to a loss in one game out of eighty-two, but more the realization Russell Westbrook is addicted to making low percentage decisions at just the wrong times.
Sam Presti did everything he could have done this summer. He crossed his i’s and dotted his t’s. Jerry West couldn’t have done much else minus one thing.
Think of it this way…if Tom Brady or Drew Brees throw four interceptions and do it over and over again…would they ever win a Super Bowl. You think OU has a chance against Alabama if Kyler Murray throws three picks?
Russell Westbrook isn’t Tom Brady or even Drew Brees although his regular season career numbers will turn out to be epic and historic.
Russell Westbrook is more like the Dan Fouts or Dan Marino of the NBA. Which isn’t a horrible thing if you can live with never winning the big ring and not taking your legacy to the Pantheon level.
It is what it is.
Sam Presti won’t solve anything by firing Billy Donovan. He’d be better served getting Russell Westbrook into a twelve steps program.
And in a subtle way, I’m guessing that’s what Jerry West told Kevin Durant that night on the phone in that historic phone call to the Hamptons.
Donovan Mitchell and Ricky Rubio at the Peake on Monday. That should be interesting.