Warriors vs. Thunder: Pregame Primer
vs. 
Golden State Warriors (6-13, 2-8 road) vs. Oklahoma City Thunder (10-9, 5-5 home)
TV: FS Oklahoma (Cox 37, HD 722, Tulsa Cox 27, DirectTV 679, UVerse 753)
Stream: Click Here
Radio: WWLS The Sports Animal (98.1 FM, 640 AM, 97.1 FM Tulsa)
Time: 7:00 CST
Offensive Rating: Thunder – 105.6 (21st), Warriors – 107.5 (15th)
Defensive Rating: Thunder – 103.5 (8th), Warriors – 111.8 (29th)
Pace: Thunder – 91.7 (19th), Warriors – 102.2 (1st)
View from the enemy: Warriors World
Another one of these. The “Slightly scary, but only because the Thunder is perfectly capable of dropping a stinker at any time, but at the same time, OKC should cruise to a victory” type of game. They terrify me. You win and it’s taking care of business. You lose and it feels like a disaster. I feel like I say this every time. But it’s true.
When you’re a team like Oklahoma City, you can’t afford to drop games like this at home. I had visions of a 4-1 homestand, but I’ll take 3-2 with losses against Houston and Boston. That means these guys beat everyone they should, played a good Rockets team tough and well, got obliterated by the Celtics. But a 2-3 home stay is bad. Bad news bears.
The Warriors are kind of your classic mediocre team. They’ve got some good players (Monta Ellis, Corey Maggette, Anthony Morrow), some young, talented but inconsistent guys (Steph Curry, Anthony Randolph) and then the fillers (Radmonovich, Mikki Moore, C.J. Watson). They’re good offensively, but hardly try on the other end. They’ve lost three straight coming in and are 2-8 on the road. They are 2-9 against plus .500 teams and have mostly beat up on the bottom feeders, although they do have nice wins against Dallas and Portland.
THE MATCHUPS
Other than Monta Ellis, you’ve got to like this matchup all the way up and down for OKC. Golden State has no one to defend Kevin Durant (undersized Maggette? Old Devean George? Anthony Morrow?), Radmonovich doesn’t really match well with Jeff Green and the Thunder bench is much deeper. I like Nenad Krstic against Mikki Moore (Andris Biedrins has been out with a lower back strain and is questionable tonight) and I don’t know who Thabo will guard, but I like him locking down whoever that is.
The real X-Factor is Ellis. Westbrook is clearly quick enough to guard him, but Shaun Livingston is supposed to get extended minutes behind Russ tonight and I just don’t see Livingston slowing down Ellis. Ellis gets to the rim at ease and with no real Thunder shot blocker patrolling the paint, it could be an issue. This could be a night to shine for Serge Ibaka and his crashing help defense.
It’s about getting stops and making open shots tonight. The Warriors are going to score some. It just happens. But they also are going to give back a fair share. If you get a couple stops, it’s easy to go on a 14-2, 17-5 run against these guys in a hurry. But they can return the favor if you rush shots, miss good looks or get lazy defensively.
It’s your classic offense versus defense game. However, the Warriors stink on the road, don’t rebound well, are relatively undisciplined and sometimes just don’t show up. All signs point to a Thunder win. But that doesn’t mean it’ll happen. It’s just one game, but these are the games you win if you’re a team serious about contending for a spot in the West.
Tip at 7:00 CST. Go Bad News Thunder.
@The DON is SO hot right now
lmao!!
I like the way collison has been playing.
What’s with the shortened rotation this game? Where’s Ibaka been? Is it really the point of the year to use an 8 man rotation?
WOOOOOOOOO Harden! So severely spectacular
it seems like every time harden scores curry answers with one of his own.
@justin
agreed. durant has played WAY too much this game..
@James.William
Its a rookie showdown. Kind of a game within a game. I like it.
BTW,
Randolph -24
Uncle Jeff +14
And I agree, bring in Ibaka, push Green to the 3. Sit KD down.
James is just padding his stats now. lol
Can we see this type of hardens game sixty more times.
God i love harden’s game, how can a 19 year ld be this smooth, polished and poised? start him already for god’s sake Brooks
is this Harden’s breakout game or WHAT?
I’m glad to see Harden outplay Curry like this. I love Curry – he’s awesome – but it just kind of feels like validation or something, I guess.
@Lefty
I agree 1000% I was hoping to see this.
This is not Harden’s break out game, please remember who our opponent is..
It’s good to get the win, GS lost the game when Maggette was ejected. I’m really annoyed with the fact that KD, Green, Harden et al were left in the game with a 14-15 point lead. The bench should have been emptied with three minutes left. Was it really necessary for Durant to play 44 minutes?
The defense came to play in the second half but, really, this was a depleted GS team to begin with and without Maggette they had like six players.
or we can just enjoy the win and worry about that later.
@justin
Maybe Brooks was trying to be fair by only playing 8 guys…..
I’m supposed to be studying for a final but was following our gamecast and just stopped by to say “Holy Harden Batman!”
great to see him getting more comfy and confident and another strong victory for the guys.
Wow we are 11-9!
And to everyone saying that this win doesn’t count because GS has a depleted roster, this very same depleted GS team beat Dallas without Corey Maggette playing a single minute.
@Vega
Preach on, preach on. This team can play, didn’t they beat someone with just 6 people playing?
Nice win, despite who we were playing and how many guys they played. This is the NBA and it’s play hard or go home. Shaun played a decent game as did Harden.
I didn’t say the win means nothing, GS is the worst defense in the league, so take some of the nice offense with a grain of salt.
Win 11 last season: Jan 28th
@Tapdog72
So what your saying is that we are just slightly ahead of last years pace?
@Warren
Well at some point the system will break down because we’ll have passed our wins from last season.
@Osano-Whoa
That is so true in a more than wonderful way.
@justin
actually, toronto has the worst defense, warriors are second
@Anonymous
They have the worst defense in the history of NBA since the 3 point line was in effect.
W