UPDATE: Jeff Green reportedly will start tonight and Nick Collison will play.
Let’s be honest here. Winning this one seems like it will be pretty darn difficult. This San Antonio team has been nothing short of outstanding thus far. They’ve lost just once and it was to the undefeated Hornets. And their wins have been mostly of the impressive, decisive variety. Considering that the Thunder still is figuring itself out and that the Spurs are a smart, veteran and well-disciplined team, this honestly feels a bit like the Utah Jazz game from two weeks ago. Read more…
(Editor’s note: These numbers were compiled before Saturday night’s NBA action, so keep that in mind.)
I think we can all agree that the Thunder have looked a little different than we remember them being last spring. Without much change in the roster, the Thunder were expected to pick up right where they left off last season. A few blowout losses and a couple close games against not so stellar teams have raised concerns, despite a pretty reasonable 5-3 record. Last night’s win was reassuring, but something still feels off. For this week’s column, I’ll looked at the Thunder’s stats over the first eight games of the season to identify where the Thunder are deviating most from last year, and I’ll throw in some speculation as to whether these trends are likely to continue.
First, a caveat: Whenever anyone quotes any stats this early into the season, sample size problems should absolutely be considered and everything should be taken with a grain of salt. Right now, a cold stretch or a big game is amplified to such a degree it is often hard to tell what’s really going on. To avoid having to mention this after practically every sentence in this article, I’m mentioning it now. Read more…
HAPPY BIRTHDAY RUSTY!!! What a way to celebrate, dropping a career-high and getting the Thunder past the division rival Blazers for the second time in two weeks.
On this week’s episode, we give out the Thunder Wonder Awards for the past week and get ready for the game against the Spurs. Sekou Smith from the NBA Hangtime Podcast joins us to talk some Thunder and to play a little game we like to call “One of These Things Doesn’t Belong Here”. So get your party hat on and enjoy!
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(Happy Saturday Thunderheads. Thank you for your support of Daily Thunder. Kevin Love people… Kevin Love.)
The Thunder trailed 100-97 with about three minutes left and to that point, Kevin Durant had scored just two points in the fourth. It was time. Time for KD to take this thing over. And that he did. He scored on the drive. He scored with the jab-step-jumper. Then he scored with a little cross-dribble, fadeaway over Nicolas Batum. It was eight straight points from Durant and they were so, so pretty.
Some people out there are calling for a Blazers-Thunder playoff series. I vote no on that. I think it’s very likely I’d die mid-way through Game 3.
I don’t know what it is when these teams hook up, but so far, we’ve seen two absolute classics. And they were pretty darn similar games too. In Portland, the Thunder played fairly atrocious defense for about 42 minutes, then locked in. And it was more of the same Friday night in Oklahoma City.
The Blazers shot 63 percent in and scored 65 points in the first half. But the Thunder tightened the screws again and more importantly, Portland finally started missing some of those tough shots that were falling earlier. OKC held the Blazers to 43 in the second half, secured a number of critical stops late in the fourth and eventually pulled out a win after Rudy Fernandez’s game-winning 3-pointer clanged off the iron.
Wait, am I still talking about defense? Forget that. Let’s talk a little about Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook here. Read more…
If you have plans tonight, I suggest you break them. Put off the movie you were going to see, eat an early dinner or skip your kids’ ballgame. You don’t want to miss Thunder-Blazers: Part II.
We all remember the last meeting, OKC’s overtime win. I still don’t really know how the Thunder got it done that night. But between that win and some of the better signs shown against the Sixers, there’s reason to feel decent about this game. Read more…
The Thunder will be through roughly 10 percent of the season by the time the horn sounds late tonight against Portland. Seven games of a season isn’t quite enough to make any definitive judgments or even spot obvious long-term trends, but it’s getting pretty close.
It has definitely been long enough to see things to be scared of, and also things to be excited about. There are bad things that ought to change in the Thunder’s favor over the long run. And there are even a few good, if so far fleeting, surprises that have at least a chance to help bring the kind of dynamism or spark needed to get Oklahoma City into true Western Conference contention. There are also bad things that just might stay bad, but those have already gotten plenty of attention. Let’s take a look at a few of the things that could break the Thunder’s way as the season moves forward.
BAD THINGS THAT WILL CHANGE
– More than one player will start shooting better than 30 percent on 3-pointers. Kevin Durant leads the Thunder beyond the arc at 31 percent on 11-36 shooting, with James Harden next in line at 24 percent on only four buckets in 17 tries. The team as a whole is only shooting 20 percent on 3-pointers. That would be a historically low percentage if it bears out over the entire season. Which means it won’t. Read more…
Zach Lowe of The Point Forward with a must-read: “The Thunder are 4-3 after the 109-103 victory, but they have a statistical profile closer to a 3-4 or 2-5 team, according to Basketball-Reference. Only two teams have a worse field-goal percentage, and the Thunder’s vaunted defense ranks just 24th in points allowed per possession. If not for their incredible foul shooting — and their huge number of attempts — the Thunder would be under .500 and getting scrutinized for a poor start. One of two things is going to happen: Either the Thunder will see their foul-shot attempts regress to the mean, or they’ll become one of the most prolific free-throw shooting teams in modern league history.”
Nate Parham of SBN Seattle on something P.J. Carlesimo said: “If there was one bright spot in that final year in Seattle, it was undeniably Durant and the star potential from his play on the court. Everybody from the folks working the concession stands to the head coach knew that. But as Kevin Pelton of Basketball Prospectus described back in 2008, Carlesimo just never figured out how to get the most out of Durant leading the young star to stagnate to some extent in his second year. The bottom line is that recognizing you have talent and knowing how to maximize it are just two different things.” Read more…
A pretty stellar feature from The Kansan on Cole Aldrich: “Step one is getting his first paycheck. Former Kansas player and current Thunder teammate Nick Collison said Aldrich should get it soon — sometime in November. But Aldrich has already found a place to live — incidentally a few blocks from where Bill Self grew up and went to high school in Edmond, Okla., about 15 minutes away from the Ford Center.”
Cole Aldrich is blogging for Dime: “We really didn’t have any rookie hazing. With Kevin [Durant] and Russell [Westbrook] and few older vets, they haven’t made me do anything crazy. I pretty much throw on the showers after practice, give them their towels. Minor things. They’re mostly lenient. I do try and do things out of my way though to please them and give them that respect. Probably the craziest thing I had to do was during training camp. It was Kevin’s birthday, and I had one of our team managers go and get party hats and kazoos and we all sang him happy birthday with kazoos.” Read more…
All things considered, this is a good win for the Thunder. For a team trying to find itself on both ends of the floor, at this point, beating anybody by any margin, is good.
That doesn’t mean that a 109-103 win over a now 2-6 Sixers squad shouldn’t have been a 15-point victory. Because it should’ve been. The Thunder had the 76ers down by 10 and 11 a number of times, but never got the stops, the rebounds or the baskets to officially put the game out of reach. A bother, definitely. But winning ain’t easy, especially when you’re not playing anywhere near your best.
But I think the Thunder found something offensively in this one. They finished with just 17 assists, which isn’t great by any means, but the ball movement was much improved. One possession stands out in my mind right now – in the first quarter, the Thunder moved the ball slickly around the perimeter, finally snapping a pass to James Harden for 3. We haven’t seen that kind of team ball at any point for over a week.
And the guy that deserves the credit for getting them going is Russell Westbrook. His line is stellar – 31 points on 11-19 shooting, 12 assists and five rebounds (and seven turnovers) – but Westbrook really pressed the action for the Thunder. He was determined to get them into sets, to get them moving and to get them energized. I think that’s potentially a reason for his seven turns. He was forced to force it, if that makes sense. Read more…
Not many games are important to win in November, especially against a lower level team. But this one tonight, is important. It’s big. A loss here, and you might be able to worry some with my permission. The Thunder needs to really rise up and play like it means something tonight. They’ve had a few days to think about this one, so it’s time to show up. Read more…
UPDATE: I think a lot of people took this as real. I guess I should’ve made it more clear that it most likely definitely isn’t.
Before the 2007 draft, everyone flipped their collective crap when Kevin Durant wasn’t able to bench press 185 pounds. He was the only player at the combine unable to do so and certain media personalities immediately took that and proclaimed he’d be a bust because of it.
Well guess what. People get stronger. Especially when they work like KD does. Observe:
Yesterday Jim Rome tweeted: “Kevin Durant’s legend grows. A meeting ran late and he couldn’t call the show. He just called me personally to apologize. A Jungle first.”
Nenad Krstic wonders to Henry Abbott how good OKC will be: “We have a tough, tough schedule coming up. It’s going to be interesting. We got to play better. We don’t play consistently. Maybe it’s like last year, we were like 12-14 or something and we turned it up and played better. But I don’t know if that’s going to be the case this year. … We’ll see.” Read more…
Darnell Mayberry with more good stuff on Kevin Durant: “The event exemplified how Durant, the Oklahoma City Thunder’s franchise player, has bucked the allure of big cities and bright lights — which often lead to big dollars — and instead has seized sponsorships in small-market Oklahoma City. “I always told myself if I play the game the right way, if I always get better, things like this are going to come to me,” Durant said. “I don’t have to go other places just to get this. I don’t want to sound like a prima donna. But if companies want to come out here and be a part of what I have going on, they’re going to have to come to Oklahoma City.” That’s precisely what’s taking place before our eyes.”
Ken Berger of CBS Sports on OKC’s early issues: “But some context reveals there’s no reason for panic. (And trust me, there won’t be with the ever-consistent Sam Presti and Brooks always keeping success and failure in perspective.) On the positive side, the Thunder were able to win at Portland and lost to Boston and at Utah. And against the Blazers and Celtics, two of the bigger teams in the league, they didn’t get physically manhandled. (They didn’t get outrebounded by either team.) The best thing about the Thunder, their coach and their superstar, Kevin Durant, is that they don’t change when things get a little rocky. And it’s way too early to call the Thunder’s struggles anything close to that.” Read more…
The Thunder haven’t been good offensively so far this year. In fact, they’ve been bad. (How’s that for intelligent basketball analysis?) I don’t just mean statistically (last in assists and AST%), but just in a basketball sense. The offense has turned into an episode of Improv Everywhere. There’s no scheme. There’s no cohesion. It’s mostly one-on-one and a total reliance on shots going in.
Oklahoma City isn’t running an offense conducive to producing open looks or easy baskets. It’s an offense based on shot-making and while the Thunder has a bunch of talented offensive players, even the best ones don’t hit much higher than 45 percent of their attempts.
Not that the Thunder had an excellent offense last season because truthfully, the Thunder won mostly on the defensive end, but what’s the problem right now? Why does the Thunder go through stretches of four or five minutes without a basket? Why are they missing 11 straight from the field? Why are they scoring 37 points in a half? Let’s look at a number of possessions from the Celtics game Sunday night.
Play 1: Westbrook and Krstic pick-and-pop Read more…
vs. 
