U-G-L-Y, that’s what this one was
(AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)
I have no idea what I just saw. Really, no clue. I’m sitting here, trying to figure out how recap this thing. Maybe the best way to sum it up would be: BAD. OFFENSE.
A couple happy fun-time stats from that… thing:
- I believe the stat is supposed to read “assist-to-turnover.” But for the Thunder tonight, they had a 19 to 6, turnover to assist ratio. No snarky comment necessary.
- Oklahoma City shot 34.3 percent, 3-14 from 3 and missed nine free throws. Blech.
- The Thunder scored just 74 points.
- And one more time, just for emphasis: SIX ASSISTS.
But yet, in what was easily the worst game Oklahoma City has played this season and one of the ugliest I’ve EVER seen them play, I’m strangely encouraged. And yes, the Thunder lost 83-74 to Portland, dropping the first game of the season. Yet I feel somewhat good. Why?
Because despite what I would kindly describe as a poo poo performance, this one was there for the taking. Kevin Durant shot the ball, um, not well. Nine missed free throws (ahem, how much did we lose by?). The turnovers and the assists (or lack thereof). Yet knock down a jumper or two and you’re right there. Why? Because the Thunder is playing some defense. And that’s what good defense can do for you. When you’re having the worst of worst nights, you can be right there. It may not be fun to watch, but it sure is better than losing by 25 and never really having a shot. OKC had a chance to win in the fourth quarter and just came up short. It was a bad game obviously, but all was not lost. I still see the improvement.
But I mean, have you ever seen a team shoot so incredibly poorly from outside the paint? Other than the three 3-pointers, I don’t know if I can think of more than two outside jumpers that went in. Seriously. From the free throw line too. Nine missed freebies is bad. And not just the Thunder either. Portland shot just 40 percent, including Brandon Roy going 5-17 from the floor. I think the stud scorers caught some shooting version of the swine flu. They say shooting is contagious, but I don’t think “they” meant it in this sense. By the end of the night, I wanted to dive headfirst into an above-ground swimming pool.
I have never, ever seen Kevin Durant shoot that poorly. Never. Ever. I wanted to cry. As someone that scours over box scores more than a normal human being should, “3 for 21″ sticks out like a white guy at a Tyler Perry movie. I’m telling myself he just got the bad one out of the way early. He went 3-21 from the field, yes, THREE of TWENTY-ONE. He even missed an easy cram towards the end of the game. But you know what? It happens to every good player. It just does. A couple of shots don’t fall, then a couple that you KNEW were going in don’t fall and now you’re not shooting, you’re guiding. You just want to place the ball on the rim and hope it somehow slips through the net. I think this paragraph summed up my basketball career actually.
Oh, and then Russell Westbrook. What a weird night. Six turnovers in the first half, nine for the game. No reason to freak, but I don’t think Westbrook isn’t totally there yet. He’s better for sure, but he’s just not there entirely. Not comparing by any means, but even Chris Paul has nights, well, maybe not Chris Paul. But good point guards have nights like this. And remember, he’s just 20 years old. It’s obvious he worked hard this summer and had a nice first two games, but we can’t expect him to play like John Stockton for a full season this early. He’s still developing and more nights like this are going to happen. The fact that he kept his head up and really kept OKC in it with 23 points on 8-12 shooting is kind of encouraging actually.
- Kevin Ollie doesn’t move the ball. Rip City Project tweeted early in the game, “I love any possession where Kevin Ollie dribbles for 14 seconds. Usually good things are going to happen for you defensively.” Yep and yep.
- I’m loving Etan Thomas’s physical, defensive presence. Nine boards for The Big Poet tonight, but he’s kind of mean on the glass. He grabs rebounds with FORCE and clears the lane with that awesome hair swinging wildly. Granted, he misses a point blank put-back with the best of them, but still, OKC needs a paint enforcer like him.
- James Harden knocked down back-to-back 3s early in the second quarter to dig the Thunder out of a 12-point deficit. He went just 2-9 from the floor in 18 minutes though. But still, those two moneyballs were nice. I kind of thought Scott Brooks should have gone with more Harden to try and open up the game a bit offensively with his creation ability, but I think Brooks deferred to trying to win ugly on the defensive end with Thabo heckling Roy. I’m not second guessing, but in hindsight, maybe a switch up could have sparked something. Who knows though.
- One more time: Six assists. The previous Oklahoma City franchise low was 13. That stat is ugly as can be, but when you don’t knock down open jumpers and the only offense is coming from your point guard creating for himself, that happens.
- Big props to Jeff Green who played extremely hard all night. He had a quiet 19 points and 11 rebounds.
- Durant and Green played 43 and 41 minutes, respectively. They’ve played over 40 in all three games so far this year. That needs to ease up a bit methinks.
- Thabo Sefolosha really did a nice job on Brandon Roy tonight. Frustrated him, stayed in front and never gave him a clean look.
- Take away Russ’s nine turns and OKC just flips it just 10 times. That’s kind of crazy to me.
Again, this was a horrible game. But oddly, it’s encouraging in my mind. The Thunder drops a game, but there are a bunch to go. The team is clearly playing some hard-nosed defense and when you put yourself in position to win even the ugliest of games, you’re going to squeak out a few you shouldn’t. They didn’t get this one tonight, but the fact they had the chance is improvement. As twisted as it sounds, it’s true. They aren’t going to shoot like that all year. But they could play defense like that all year. Which will translate into wins. You won’t hear any, “I knew we shouldn’t have gotten excited about those two wins” crap from me. This was one of 82. It happens.
A day off and then the world champs roll into town. It sure would have been nice to be 3-0 heading into that, but 2-1 is a nice consolation prize. I’ve got a feeling Durant doesn’t sleep tonight because he’s at the gym. Things will get righted offensively and as long as the defensive effort continues, OKC could have a chance Tuesday night.
Definite Defensive Improvement from Last Year BUT More Improvement is Needed
The shell defense has its advantages. Its main purpose is to stop easy baskets inside and to clutter up the lane. It works very well when you have unwilling passers driving the lane (see Stuckey from last night). Tonight it worked well when Travis Outlaw and Martell Webster drove inside. IT fares poorly when you have good passers driving (Brandon Roy, Andre Miller, and Jeff Blake). That’s where I hope Coach Brooks get the guys to adjust their tendencies based on personnel.
To illustrate, Russell Westbrook guarded Jeff Blake tonight. Blake is a sharpshooter. IMO, Russell shouldn’t leave Blake unless the lane is wide open and Russell has to shut it down. He gave up six points (two threes) by overhelping. And remember that Blake isn’t a guy that possesses the quickness to get by Russell. On another occasion, Andre Miller was backing down Kevin Ollie in the post. Ollie had good position and was about ready to force a tough fadeaway. Etan Thomas stepped over away from his man for no reason. Everyone else rotated, and of course the result was a wide open three pointer by Webster in the corner. That’s another three points given up needlessly
Brooks made some curious coaching moves. Thomas gives us a legit five off the bench, so Collison plays the four when he is in with Etan. That’s all good when you have a four on the floor that’s an inside player, but the Blazers use Outlaw to play the four with the second string. You don’t want Collison guarding a three point shooter. He did his best, but you can only do so much in that situation. I would have preferred him to play Harden and Thabo together with Green at the four.
The main problem we had last year defensively was getting lost in rotation. Jeff Green and Durant (to a lesser extent) still have this problem. Once they leave their men, they usually make little effort to get back to them. Portland made us pay multiple times with excellent ball rotation. Our bigs are hedging the picks well, allowing the wings to recover. At that point they have to return to their men QUICKLY. Most of the time, this doesn’t happen. The score could have been worse – Portland missed a lot of wide open threes.
Again, defensively we are improved over last year – don’t get me wrong – I don’t think we played bad defense. I am just striving for better defense. Until this occurs, we can’t beat playoff teams on a regular basis.
The Thunder is undefeated when Durant scores over twenty, and when Westbrook has 10+ assists. They havent won a game in which Westbrook is the leading scorer. I could see this becoming a trend.
@Kev
Brooks made some curious coaching moves. Thomas gives us a legit five off the bench, so Collison plays the four when he is in with Etan. That’s all good when you have a four on the floor that’s an inside player, but the Blazers use Outlaw to play the four with the second string. You don’t want Collison guarding a three point shooter. He did his best, but you can only do so much in that situation. I would have preferred him to play Harden and Thabo together with Green at the four.
I was saying that all night about Collison gaurding out on the perimeter. Coach Brooks should’ve subbed in the right matchups, I was very confused on why Brooks would leave in the slower Collison than to sub in more athletic players like DJ or Ibaka.
I pretty much only watched the defensive part of the game. I will go back tomorrow and check out our offense to see if Portland did anything to disrupt our offense . . .
If you want a silver lining, realize that Thabo would have gotten an extra $5M if we signed that extension after this game. He was phenomenal on Roy.
Long story short, KD went 3 for 21 and we lost by 9. Think that would have happened 12 months ago?
Sorry for the breakup…mobile phone. But one last point — ENJOY being disappointed. What a change in such a short time.
Let’s not go overboard. They played without their second best player for most of the game, and their best player shot less than thirty percent from the field. Some of that was due to Thabo, but people were talking about Durant being off when Roy was a little off as well. Keep in mind it was a home game and we lost by nine. Yes it was better, but we still have a lot of room for improvement – the game was winnable and we couldnt get it done.
I had to replay those two b2b threes by Harden for my wife. Especially the one where he pumped and let the defender fly by. I showed her and told her how we had that shot 500 times last year and didn’t have the personnel to hit it regularly. It was great to see.
I agree with Royce here, just a weird night of basketball. The Thunder are really packing the lane defensively. I noticed Jeff Green not guarding anybody a couple of times.
How about the subs all being positive on the +/-, while the starters….well, you know.
Thanks for the Defensive notes Kev.
No problem Joe – just trying to add my two cents –
tough loss – even though we hung around, I would have liked to win this one . . .
the Lakers are destryoying the Hawks right now – they are putting on a dunkshow – we’d better be ready on Tuesday . . .
As we mentioned a lot in the summer, our offense was actually worse than our defense last year. I’m not entirely discouraged by this, because it seemed more about shots not falling than guys not playing, but we should put that in some perspective. We were a very very bad team offensively last year because we played way too much one one one, our guards didn’t get the ball to open players, and outside of 10 feet we couldn’t hit water in the ocean. Does that sound familiar?
This game should be a huge wake up call to anyone feeling too good about the first wins. Westbrook needs to be the guy we saw the first two games and in the preseason. Durant needs to be willing to pass and take smart shots. Green needs to keep it in the post when he can and exploit matchups. Tonight looked eerily like last year, and every no-rookie should remember it. I expect a big turnaround against LA. I don’t know if it will be enough to win, but these guys saw what it takes to win, and were just reminded what it takes to lose. Time to decide which is their destiny.
On a side note: are we in a sudden resurgence of basketball being extra exciting? There are going to be 4 games just tonight in which the winning team scores 120 or more, and the losing team scores over 100. I’m not opposed to defense by any means, but I think most people would admit watching their team drop 120 points is a lot more fun than watching them drop 85, even if both result in wins.
@Keith
Not to me. When my team drops 120 and they loose? that only means that we either went to OT or two… or we played ghost D. This game was frustrating to watch, just because the entire time I was thinking “Man if only we could hit SOME of these..”
but he Uncle Jeff putback did put a massive smile on my face
Right now I am rewatching and I am midway through the second quarter – either someone hasn’t mentioned it or I skipped over it (probably the latter). Durant had ZERO assists. People were talking about RW’s tunnel vision – Durant has people open every time he drives. I know you want your star shooting as much as possible – but I will take a wide open jumper over an awkward drive against two or three in the lane. At least in the 1st quarter Russell was passing well – people just weren’t making shots . . .
more later . . .
2nd Quarter Recap
Russell was definitely pressing. In the Defense section, I alluded to the fact that Blake lit him up early. He was very aggressive in post ups and drives against Blake in the second. I think he went back to the streetball philosophy of “You just scored on me, that’s an insult, now I’m scoring on you”. Maybe Blake was talking trash. Anyone at the game notice anything? Ruseell still passed out of a double team (Durant missed a three) – and Durant threw a mediocre pass out of the lane after a drive – Green couldnt do anything with it.
more later . . .
Rather than Loud City, I really think we should embrace calling the Ford Center “The Thunder Dome”. I’ve heard it used quite a bit already, and it’s easily the coolest thing to come from the team name thus far. Tina Turner. Master Blaster. In fact I further opine that when Etan Thomas or Ibaka or whomever gets a killer block, the Jumbotron should explode with big bold letters echoed by the announcers voice “MASTERBLASTER!” Think of the psychological effect on the Thunder’s opponents. Who wants to be Master Blasted? I don’t. Nobody does. It takes the Ben Wallace “For Whom the Bell Tolls” to new me-pleasin’ levels.
@Kev
Blake was talking trash and being overly physical with Westbrook to the point that I half-expected RW to just turn around and ask the ref if he’s going to call anything and when the ref shakes his head no, RW just flat out knocks Blake unconscious and then smiles.
Ugly game, hard to get assists when no one is making shots (for RW, Kev is correct about Durant not looking to dish at all tonight) and easily one of the most start and stop games I’ve ever seen.
I’m wondering if this one was a little bit of both teams hitting the early season wall/mental fatigue of three games in five days thing.
I concur with Matt, and hereby nominate his post for Smart Thoughts of the Week.
thanks JG – I just took an educated guess. This is part of the growing process of NBA players. Younger players get taken out of their game. That’s why Blake does it – he knows that it will work on RW. I am sure Blake doesn’t do it to veterans. Veterans just raise their level of play overall, they don’t get carried away with the one-on-one game.
3rd quarter was more of the same – RW mixed drives with passes. Green, Durant, Sefolosha, and Harden all missed wide open jumpers off passes from RW. RW forced the action sometimes, but it seemed to work.
First off, whomever took KD out for Jeiger-shots after the Texas win in Stillwater MUST BE FOUND!!!
Secondly, I found myself screaming at Brooks about the third time Ollie did that “dribble down for 13 seconds and use up all the freakin shot clock” trick. Why isn’t Livingston getting any burn?????!?? Ollie is a third string point guard AT BEST, and I am fine with him in the Chucky Atkins role, but we need a real back-up for Russ. Is that not what Livingston is supposed to be. (scratches head)
Love, love,LOVE Etan inside. He makes such a difference to this team, and it is so fun to watch him rebound with such ferociousness! There was one rebound he almost took Jeff Green’s head off with an elbow and Uncle Jeff gave him a look like, “Easy Killer!” It was great.
Etan was definitely more agressive yesterday, but against Detroit he was listless on the glass . . . I am hoping he gets more consistent . . .
Royce, congrats on making the Daily Dime!
What happened to the Durant that passed? Or the Westbrook that made the smart play? What an ugly game. If they played that selfishly every night, they’d quickly stop being my favorite team. That was just difficult to watch. Too many guys driving into double teams and forcing up terrible shots. Durant seemed to think that any time he was guarded by a guy under 6’8″, it was his birthright to jack one up.
But it’s great to see Jeff Green playing so well. He seemed kind of overwhelmed the past two years but it really seems like it’s coming together for him. That putback at the end of the 1st half was awesome.
Not knocking coach but Shaun, DJ, and Ibaka has got to get off that bench some.
Odd game overall. On one hand, it was painful to watch on the offensive end. On the other hand, we played terribly and still had a good chance to win for most of the second half. Knock down our FTs (which is usually a strength of our squad) and if KD shoots even 30%, we would have won by 8-10 points, most likely.
I really expected Green to step up in the second half after LMA went out with injury, but he was pretty much invisible. And since Harden seemed to be the only person knocking down his shots, I was surprised that he didn’t get more playing time either. When Russ is turning the ball over like that, why not give the rookie a go?
At the very least, we know we can’t play much worse than that. And except for the first quarter of this game, our defensive intensity has been excellent this season.
I would rather see Harden run the point than Ollie.
Nobody really played that well. Obviously Durant went 3-21, Westbrook had 9 TO’s and 2 assists, we shot 21% from 3 and even shot 71% on FT’s. Harden also went 2-9 from the field. A little bit of a reality check imo. We won the first two which is great and we are an improved team but but we are not that far removed from being horrible. We still have to show and and play to win games. Move on to LA. I’ll be interested to see how we bounce back.
@James
I’ll say it again–the single most important player that needs to play well in order for us to get wins is Westbrook. It was fairly miraculous that he played that terribly and we still had a chance to win.
2 things to look for against LA:
1) Better ball movement so we get more uncontested shots;
2) The same level of defensive intensity.
If we do those two things, I think we have a chance to win on any given night.
@Dai
It’s definitely a little troubling that the Thunder’s second best assist man and playmaker, thereby someone who is probably the second best option at point guard is their ROOKIE SHOOTING GUARD.
I understand that Ollie doesn’t “hurt the team all that much,” to quote some reporters, but boy it would be nice if the backup point guard could help the team, huh?
Not sure what’s going on with Livingston and Ollie, but backup PG was supposed to be an area of strength coming into the season and that is really hurting us right now…though thank goodness for Harden’s playmaking ability off the bench. As soon as he finds an offensive rhythm, he’s going to be a handful for opposing defenses.
Radio guys are saying KD turned 21 on Saturday night. They were guessing that perhaps he was still feeling the effects??
I’ll just echo some things other people have said but I agree that White and Livingston HAVE to see playing time soon. I also don’t understand why if Harden was brought in to help score when KD was off why he didn’t get more playing time towards the end of the game. At the end Thabo looked tired and Roy was driving on him at will, why not not let Harden get time there? Thirdly, run the offense through jeff green and kristic in the post when no one is scoring. Kristic didn’t even have a single fg attempt til late in the 4th, that’s either bad execution, bad coaching, or excellent defense by the other team.
@James
Hmm… wasn’t KD’s birthday a month ago?
Jeff’s put back dunk, and Russell’s block on LMA. Those were great plays. Other than that, holding Portland to 83 points is a good effort. That will give you a chance to win when you’re firing on more than one cylinder.
Coach brooks is too inflexible, he runs his game plan to the end and doesnt seem to make adjustments, it was obvious by the 3rd quarter what we were doing wasnt working, we needed to change something. We could have put Dj or livingston in, maybe they would have a good shooting night, we could have picked up the pace and changed temp to more fast break style, I know we are trying to get away from that, but we needed to score. Even just running a pick and roll or pick and pop game a bit would have helped, we have a lot of versatile players and can go big or small, but we dont use it, brooks ran his rotation and slow pace and didnt change when it wasnt working. Obviously we wont always shoot this poorly, but we need to find ways to win even when we are, thats what makes an elite team, this was a winnable game.
Kevin Durant was horrible in this game. Not just because he had a bad shooting night, he was just bad. He took too many contested shots when he could have made the extra pass. This is the kind of game that Kevin Durant detractors will cite when they call him a ball hog who takes too many difficult shots, it costed us this game. The offense stalled completely whenever he touched the ball.
This was a winnable game with LaMarcus Aldridge sitting out and Brandon Roy having a bad night.
That’s right it was. Not sure what they were talking about.
Thabo played some really good defense on Roy 5-17 and no free throws until 5 min left in the 4th.
AMEN – He runs the same rotations – regardless of circumstance or opponents personnel. We already talked about Collison guarding a three point shooter. No adjustmant was made in the second half. Every rotation this year has (for the most part)been the same – Ollie for Westbrook, Thomas for Krstic, Collison for Green, Harden for Thabo, Green for Durant (with Green playing the three). On a few occasions he went with Durant and Green outside before Thabo came back in. That’s it.
What about Weaver? Maybe these guys are dogging it in practice . . . Why did we sign Ollie when we have those two?? Any guesses people??
Another thing on the style
We have a bunch of young players – why NOT play fast??
Think of Green, Durant, and Westbrook running the break all day!! Usually older, bigger teams slow down. We have a team made to run. Westbrook’s gotten better at looking up, so it makes even more sense this year. We really don’t have the outside shooters to play halfcourt all game. Any decent defensive team will scout us and say ” Make Durant Drive into doubleteams, and give RW and Thabo the jumper”. We have little to no post game. We should run.
Hopefully brooks gets it together, this loss was avoidable, I like brooks, he is a nice guy, but sometime im scratching my head, the minutes thing for durant and green also, against the kings and pistons we had decent leads and could have sat them more but didnt, we need to use more bench when we are winning keep guys fresh for the tough games, it will be interesting to see what happens tomorrow against the lakers.
The 4th quarter was 2008/2009 Russell. He drove repeatedly in the lane regardless of how clear it was. He shunned open outlets behind the three point line – He basically said “I’m getting mine”. Again, I think Blake got to him. Still, he’s had two good games besides this, so I can’t be too hard on him. He has to play under control, and not let his emotions dictate his play.
@Kev
Russell was the only player not name Jeff Green that was doing anything positive last night. You can reasonably lay blame on every other player outside those two.
Russell had nine turnovers, and everyone wants to kill him. Kev, you come out and accuse him of trying to get his and ignoring everyone else. Well, he shot 12 shots against the Kings, 11 against the Pistons, and 12 against the Blazers. Seems to me that his mindset didn’t change as much as you would like for us to believe. And he went 8-12, while KD was going 3-18. Maybe what he should have done was forget passing to KD in the first place, and just continue to beat his man off the dribble and get to the rim, something KD should have done himself.
It’s hard to register an assist when the rest of your teammates shoot a combined 16 for 58.
I said the 4th quarter he reverted back to the old Russell – I defended his earlier play (in the first half) so I don’t see what you’re implying. His 4th quarter was horrible, so I don’t know why you are fending him – when you dribble in to score regardless of how many guys are in the lane, you will turn it over against a good team. Yes people missed shots – I said that in my earlier posts – bt his 4th quarter was just bad. Evidently Blake got in his head, and he couldnt handle it . . .
COmparing the three games makes no sense. The Blazers are better defensively than those two teams – and his shots in the first two games were of high quality – it’s not about the amount of shots, its the type of shots he was taking. Having nine turnovers in one game is indefensible
9 turnovers is indefensible.
You and I just look at this differently. You want to knock Russell for taking over, I want to applaud him for it. I know you don’t want your point guard scoring as a first option, and I’m on board with that. But outside Jeff Green, there was no one else to depend on. I think it’s just fine to take over, especially when you’re shooting 66%.
You say the shots in his first two games were of high quality, yet he only shot 2-11 against Detroit. And looking at his hot spots, all his shots in all the games were from the same spots on the floor.
It seemed that you think Russell should have done something different in the 4th quarter when the game was on the line. That he should have passed the ball so that KD could miss again, or Krstic could fumble around with it, or Thabo could pass up an open shot to give it right back, as they had done for the previous 3 quarters. Then you said he was in the “I’ll get mine” mode, which implies that he didn’t care about the team. What I’m implying is that he did care, and decided that if anyone was going to do anything positive, it would be him, and he took over. It would be one thing if he was shooting 2-11, but he wasn’t. It would be one thing if he couldn’t beat Blake off the dribble, but he did every time he tried. It would be one thing if anyone else on the floor could hit a shot, but they couldn’t. I saw Russell as being the most efficient scorer on the floor that night, which he was, and doing what he could to keep his team in the game.
Last year’s Russell did the best he knew to do, and scored first. This year’s Russell tried for 3 quarters to get things going for his team and no one showed up. So he took the team on his back and did all he could to keep them in it. Yeah, he had 9 turns, that inexcusable. He also shot 66% while everyone else was taking naps.
It’s just apparent that we look at his motivation differently.
@Jax Raging Bile Duct
Not to mention Brooks specifically told him at halftime to attack the basket whenever he got the chance, per Matt Pinto.
So not only was it not RW going out to get his, he was directly INSTRUCTED to play that way.
Now I’ll never defend carless turnovers caused by recklessness, but in a game that ugly, it becomes a little more understandable.
Yes, and by the way, I enjoy inteligent conversation, so this is cool . . .
Anyway, let’s say that Brooks did tell him that. Get yours since no one else is scoring. I don’t know why you would want Westbrook driving into a triple team, or putting up awkward shots. He went 8 for 12, but he had several turnovers in the 4th. Yes, his teammates were missing in the first three quarters, but they were taking GOOD shots. They were open; they just didnt fall. Those people were open, IMO you have to play each possession the same way regardless of what happened on the last possession. For example, I’m the point guard (with RW’s abilities). I drive – Harden’s man leaves him to cut me off. I’m passing to Harden EVERY time. He’s a (circa) 40 percent shooter from three. I will take my chances. I’m not forcing anything. I’m not attempting a shot and then throwing a bad pass at the last minute when I see my shot is about to be blocked. I will run the offense the same way every time. I know that Harden, Green, and Durant are good shooters from behind the line, I will trust them to make it eventually. I discount his 66 percent, because in his situation (triple teamed in the lane) you can either shoot a bad shot or instead throw a bad pass and turn it over. The TO doesnt show up in the FG%, but it’s the same thing; a wasted trip. Even worse, the TO usually leads to a runout and an easy two.
IMO Russ was tired of Blake scoring and talking trash, so he came back with a vengeance. I doubt that Brooks told him to try and take over.
Sorry for the babbling . . .
I missed where Pinto said that Brooks told RW to attack the basket. IMO that was a mistake, because RW is out of control when he does that. Obviously he has to listen to the coach, but that strategy backfired. Hopefully Brooks sees that on tape.
@kev
I think Russell did try that. And everyone missed. At some point, don’t you say to yourself, “Gee, KD is 3-21 tonight, I’m 8-12, maybe I should take this shot…”?
Thabo isn’t the only one passing up open looks, James only shoots when he absolutely has to as well. It’s hard to get open looks every possession, and when you pass one up, you might not get another one. I can see where James is coming from, since he’s a rookie and most rookies are hesitant to shoot. But Thabo’s hesitancy is from his lack of confidence in his shot.
I’m sure Russell was even more frustrated than I was when he passed the ball to the open guy and that guy didn’t take the shot, which means I have to work to get the ball back to set something else up.
I just don’t believe that Russell’s approach to the end of the game was the wrong decision. I think it was the only thing that was working, by the only player willing to be aggressive in the situation.
I think the only thing Brooks will see on tape is how Russell was the only aggressive player on his team that night, and the only one making something positive happen.
If that’s all Brooks sees then we have issues – I still can’t believe that Brooks will give Russell a pass for nine turnovers – but now we are spinning our wheels – let’s just agree to disagree . . .