Thunder 106, Cavs 77
Nuggets from my notebook from Sunday’s win over Cleveland.
- Before the game, Thunder coach Scott Brooks said the biggest key would be energy. It looked like the Thunder didn’t get that message as Cleveland got off to a 6-2 lead. But then the Thunder went on a 13-2 run to take a 15-8 advantage before turning this one into a blowout.
- Russell Westbrook sparked the entire team tonight. His hustle was huge. His passing was pinpoint. Westbrook had five points, five assists, one steal and one rebound in the first quarter as the Thunder outscored the Cavs 31-17.
- Here’s a story of karma. Two seasons ago, when the Thunder played at Cleveland around Thanksgiving, the Cavs absolutely destroyed the Thunder. The game was never close. The Thunder trailed by as many as 42 and lost by 35. During a timeout, the Cavs’ in-game entertainment arranged for four or five fans to come onto the court and say what they were thankful for. In what had to be staged, a young boy, probably no older than 9 or 10, took his turn and said, “I’m thankful I don’t have to watch the Oklahoma City Thunder every night.” The crowd erupted and even the Cavs’ bench was in stitches. I’ll never forget the arrogance the Cavs franchise had then. Even Cavs media members had a jolly old time cracking on the Thunder. Don’t worry, Cleveland, we’ve got just the thing for Cavs fans.
- With 40 seconds left in the first period, the Cavs had hit just five of 20 shots and turned the ball over five times.
- I can’t remember a Thunder game in the past two years that had more highlights. This was the exact opposite of that game in Cleveland two years ago.
- James Harden wins the highlight of the night.
Raptors 111, Thunder 99
News, notes and observations from Friday’s loss at Toronto.
- The Thunder played some absolutely terrible defense in this one. Toronto made 45 of 82 shots (54.9 percent). It seemed like every made field goal for the Raptors was a layup, an alley-oop or an open jump shot. OKC’s resistance was straight up regretful.
- An easy excuse would be the triple-overtime game the Thunder played two nights earlier at New Jersey. But I’m not buying that. The key phrase is ‘two nights earlier.’ The Thunder had ample time to rest up and get ready. This looked much more like a game that the Thunder just didn’t show up for. The first quarter was terrible, and the only period in which the Thunder mustered any energy was the second quarter. That’s when OKC outscored Toronto 34-24.
- After taking a seven-point halftime lead, the Thunder watched the Raptors race to a 17-4 run to start the second half. It led to a 34-18 third quarter. OKC made just six field goals in the period and never had much of a chance in this one after that.
- I still thought Thunder coach Scott Brooks waived the white flag kind of early. The Thunder trailed by 14 with 2:55 left, and Brooks put in Byron Mullens, Royal Ivey and Mo Peterson along with Eric Maynor and Thabo Sefolosha. That unit quickly cut the deficit to nine a minute later, but the Raptors pushed it right back to double digits. Inserting the subs so early wasn’t a huge deal. I just would have liked to have seen Brooks let his main guys give it one more go
- Of course you know by now Kevin Durant didn’t play in this one, missing his second straight game because of a knee injury. The Thunder fell to 3-1 without Durant.
- In Durant’s absence, Russell Westbrook couldn’t replicate the same magic he made two nights earlier in New Jersey when he scored all 13 Thunder points in that third overtime. Westbrook had 20 points on 9-for-19 shooting with seven assists, three rebounds and five turnovers. And I thought Westbrook forced the action a lot tonight. He played recklessly and out of control throughout much of this one.
- After the game, Brooks made a comment about players playing too much one-on-one. While not naming any names, Brooks said the Thunder isn’t a team built to rely on one player to carry the load every night, and that only a handful of teams have players like that. That comment could easily have been directed at Westbrook, which effectively should bring us all back to reality after the past few days of fawning over his feats.
Thunder 123, Nets 120
I’m not with the team on this two-game road trip. Our man John Rohde has you covered with complete coverage.
But I had the DVR going for Wednesday’s triple-overtime win at New Jersey and, as always, I’ve got some nuggets on my noggin after this one. Rather than coming from my usual courtside viewpoint, these post-game thoughts are being delivered to you from my couch.
- There is no doubt in my mind the Thunder should have fouled Anthony Morrow with 1.5 seconds remaining in regulation. The counter argument in that situation always is the risk of fouling a player while he’s shooting, as evidenced by Stephen Graham sending Jeff Green to the line in the second OT. But when Morrow put the ball on the floor, taking one dribble before hoisting his game-tying runner, that presented a perfect time to wrap up Morrow well before he could get a shot off. As exciting as this triple-overtime thriller was, it should never have gotten to that point.
- I thought it was a great timeout by Thunder coach Scott Brooks 1 minute, 5 seconds into the first overtime period when the Nets started on a 5-0 run. Thunder players still looked shell-shocked. And that run could have been the start of the end of this game for the Thunder.
- Instead of writing about the Thunder’s resiliency and grit and toughness and blah, blah, blah, I’ll do this. Here’s how many times I thought the Thunder was going to lose this game. Ready? When Morrow hit the 3 at the regulation buzzer to send it to OT, when Morrow and Travis Outlaw hit tough shot for the Nets 5-0 run to start the first OT, when Serge Ibaka fouled out early in the first overtime, when the Nets went up 100-94 and OKC couldn’t get anything going offensively in the first OT, when Russell Westbrook missed a wild jumper with eight seconds left in the second OT and hustled to get his hands on his own miss only to knock the ball out of bounds and give it back to New Jersey with the Thunder trailing by one, when Morrow made two foul shots to put the Nets up 110-107 with 6.2 seconds remaining in the second OT, when I saw the look on Nenad Krstic’s face, halfway covered with a towel, just before Morrow’s two free throws and when Kris Humphries put the Nets on the board first for the third straight overtime with a mid-range J from the top of the key.
- Westbrook’s two consecutive pull-up jumpers in the first overtime that tied it at 100-100 were the definition of clutch. And they saved the Thunder in the initial overtime.
- Green’s three free throws with 4.6 seconds left in the second OT were obviously the biggest game-changer for the Thunder at that point. But I thought the back-to-back shot clock violations the Thunder forced the Nets into late in that second extra frame were just as big in saving this victory.
Rockets 99, Thunder 98
Nuggets from my notebook from Sunday’s loss at Houston.
- I’ll remember two things about this one: how the Thunder didn’t come out with any intensity whatsoever in the first half and how Kevin Durant’s 20-footer at the end came inches short of giving OKC a win in a game it had no business being in.
- The Thunder would have won this game by 20 had it came out ready to play. Instead, the starters looked largely aloof in the opening 24 minutes. And still, the Thunder trailed by only eight at the half. This loss is squarely on the starters’ shoulders. Said Durant: “We didn’t really have too much energy. We brought that energy in the second half and almost won the game. But we’ve got to start off a little better. We had it in spurts. But we’ve got to go back to how we were playing the last four or five games, starting off with a lot of energy. And that starts with me, Russell, Jeff, Thabo and Serge. We got to do a better job. I have confidence we’ll do it next game.”
- Early in the second quarter, Brooks went with a bench unit of Eric Maynor, James Harden, Thabo Sefolosha, D.J. White and Nick Collison. The Thunder trailed 37-25 shortly after White came in for Jeff Green. And with almost no scorers on the court, it looked like the deficit would only get worse. But a funny thing happened. The four bench players and Sefolosha actually played with effort and peeled off a 6-0 run. The starters came back and the Rockets lead immediately grew to 11. That’s effort.
- I thought Durant’s shot was good when it left his hands. He has the ability to make those game-winners, but it just hasn’t happened for him. And after the game, he voiced his frustration. “I’ve been working so hard on that only to come up short time after time. But I got to keep being positive, keep believing and keep working. Hopefully it’ll start to change. I’ve had one in four years.”
- The actual attempt was a decent look. You can’t really blame Durant for taking that shot. The one he hoisted at Indiana at the end of regulation was a different story. But this one was a solid shot. My only issue with Durant’s choice tonight, and after most of his potential game-winners, is that it was a fadeaway. Durant’s always falling backward or leaning sideways on his last-second shots. And it’s never a surprise when they come up short or bounce long or miss inches to the left or right. He’s tall enough to shoot over just about anyone an opposing coach can put on him. And I for one would like to see him square up and get a more textbook and rhythmic shot off.
A Quick Look At Lineups
MILWAUKEE — I don’t know if Kevin Durant is going to play tonight.
The Thunder forward is a game-time decision against Milwaukee because of a sprained ankle. Teammate Jeff Green, meanwhile, is doubtful.
Now that we have that out of the way, let’s look at what we might see Thunder coach Scott Brooks employ in their potential absences.
In the Thunder’s 89-84 win at Boston on Friday night, Brooks trotted out 14 different lineups. We haven’t seen that many combinations since the exhibition season. But with Durant and Green having to sit out Friday, Brooks was left with no choice but to play mix and match with a bunch of non-regulars like Mo Peterson, Royal Ivey and D.J. White. And with Durant, Green and Nenad Krstic all potentially on the shelf tonight against the Bucks, it’s no telling what we’re likely to see.
Brooks, as he has since taken the job, requires only one thing: if you get minutes, play them hard.
His role players responded in Boston, and they might have to do so again tonight.
I tracked the different units Brooks used against Boston, as they might foreshadow what we see tonight. There were some pretty funky lineups used against the Celtics. The Thunder played so darn hard, though, it hardly mattered who played with whom. But what did we learn from seeing such a makeshift rotation? A couple of things.
Thunder 89, Celtics 84
Nuggets from my notebook from Friday’s win at Boston.
- Despite being without Kevin Durant and Jeff Green, the Thunder showed a lot of fight early against the Celtics. And that fight carried over for 48 minutes. OKC took a 25-23 lead after the first quarter behind team play. The Thunder had seven assists in the first quarter and saw all five starters score in double digits.
- The story of this game, though, was how the Thunder played smart and the Celtics played around. Boston didn’t respect the Thunder coming into this one without Durant and Green. And in addition to playing together, the Thunder played a game of pacing. On nearly every possession, the Thunder slowed things down, walked the ball up the court and tried to get high-percentage shots that wouldn’t lead to Celtics run outs. And it worked to perfection.
- What’s crazy is both coaches acknowledged this outcome as a realistic possibility before the game. When I shook my head and said to Thunder coach Scott Brooks at this morning’s shootaround that this was a bad time to be wounded, Brooks responded, “Or a great time.” And when Celtics coach Doc Rivers was asked if he needed to remind his players how dangerous the Thunder can be without Durant he responded, ““If I don’t, they will.”
- Said Rivers after the game: “Veteran teams should know better and we didn’t. You could see it. On both ends there was no urgency the entire night.”
- None of the above facts should been seen as a slight to the Thunder. As I said, OKC played smart and played together. It’s the Celtics’ fault that they didn’t bring their ‘A’ game. But give credit to the Thunder. The team came into a hostile environment that hadn’t seen a loss all season and secured a short-handed win over the best team in the East.
- The Thunder shot 2-for-18 in the fourth quarter. And you’ve got to think that’s almost impossible. Russell Westbrook, who had been brilliant in the first three quarters aside from occasional moments of being out of control, went 0-for-7 in the period. His fourth-quarter performance summed up the team’s struggles. Westbrook took jump shot after jump shot after jump shot. In the final 6 1/2 minutes, the Thunder had only three drives to the basket. Westbrook drew a flagrant foul on Shaq on the first. Westbrook missed a layup on the second drive. And James Harden missed a layup on the only other drive.
- You could say some of the shot selection in the fourth quarter was bad. But my question is where were the sets to get the team a better shot?
- It looked like it was going to be a long night for the Thunder when Shaq got going early. In the first half, he was 5-for-5 for 10 points and three rebounds. He finished the game with 11 points and six rebounds. I’d say that’s pretty good.
- Royal Ivey made some huge plays tonight. When Rajon Rondo pestered Westbrook into nearly fumbling the ball all over the court, Ivey scooped up the rock and banked in a 3 from the wing as the shot clock expired. It gave the Thunder a 77-67 lead, its largest of the night, with 29.2 seconds left in the third. Ivey later drew a charge on Rondo with 6:19 left to play and the Thunder up 83-76. It was Rondo’s fifth foul, and a hamstring injury kept Rondo sidelined for much of the rest of this one.
- Mo Peterson got some burn tonight in the first half. We didn’t see whether he can make a shot.
- D.J. White was again big off the bench.
- Nick Collison took another charge tonight. It was his third in four games.
- What do you know? The Thunder made 6-for-9 from 3 while the Cs made 1 of 8. Who would have thunk it without Durant available?
- What I liked most about this one was that the Thunder never backed down. The Celtics didn’t necessarily try to intimidate the Thunder. But there were some hard fouls given out and we saw OKC respond by shoving back. Thabo Sefolosha stepped to Kevin Garnett. Serge Ibaka had some jawing and bumping with Garnett. And Westbrook and Rondo went at it pretty good. Nobody wanted a piece of Shaq, though, after a few of his hard fouls. : ) But all in all, it was a great show of toughness, both mentally and physically, by the Thunder.
-DM-
Thunder 116, Rockets 99
Nuggets from my notebook from Wednesday’s win over Houston .
- Without question, this was the Thunder’s most complete game. Regardless of the Rockets’ injury situation, this was an impressive performance by the home team. Impressive because we’ve seen so many losses in games just like these. But rather than toy with a short-handed squad, as we’ve seen the Thunder do so many times in the past, OKC took it to Houston. The energy and hustle was the difference. There were no bad quarters in this one, no prolonged and unmatched Rockets runs and no stretches of sheer sloppiness by the Thunder. It’s as good of a sign as we’ve seen early this year that this team is growing up.
- Thank God Aaron Brooks didn’t play in this one. Kyle Lowry’s two-point, four-assists performance is certainly going to make the Thunder’s stats against opposing starting point guards look better.
- Luis Scola’s 26-point, eight-rebound effort won’t do OKC’s numbers against starting power forwards any favors.
- I’m starting to get the same feeling about Russell Westbrook after each game that I had for Kevin Durant at some point last season. I feel like I should write something to acknowledge how well he played. But that something is starting to become redundant. And that’s a great thing for the Thunder. It says Westbrook is becoming crazy good and incredibly consistent.
- Durant’s passing was awesome tonight. He finished with four assists and I recall three of them being beauties. In the first half, he hit James Harden on a drive and kick for 3-pointer and then found Nick Collison on a drive and dump off for a dunk. And in the second half, he created an easy dunk for D.J. White off another drive. All three players were wide open because of Durant’s playmaking.
- I’ve said it before, but it’s worth repeating. Slowly but surely, the Thunder’s bench is becoming a force. Harden is starting to find his rhythm a tad bit, Eric Maynor is playing lights out and Nick Collison is now contributing on both ends. When (or maybe if) Serge Ibaka moves back to his reserve role when Jeff Green gets healthy, the Thunder could have one of the best benches in the league.
Thunder 110, Blazers 108
Nuggets from my notebook from Friday’s win over Portland.
- Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook scored the final 18 points for the Thunder.
- Here’s how entertaining this game was: there were 14 ties and 16 lead changes.
- And here’s how impressive of a closeout it was by OKC: the lead changed teams only once in the fourth quarter.
- After Durant’s fourth straight jumper in the final four minutes, he shouted to his teammates, ‘This is my house!” Always modest, Durant denied it after the game. But he earned the right to scream such a statement after his fourth-quarter performance. Said Portland coach Nate McMillan, “Durant made All-Star plays. He made important points.”
- Durant desperately needed a clutch performance like this. In the fourth quarters and overtime in the Thunder’s first seven games, KD averaged just 5.4 points on just 12 of 36 (33.3 percent) shooting from the field. When I asked him about the difference tonight, he replied with a candid answer. “I got a little bit of rest at the start of the fourth,” Durant said. “So I felt good coming in.” Durant’s minutes have become a bit of an issue to start the season. He entered tonight averaging a league-leading 42.3 minutes and recently admitted that he could have used more rest in Sunday’s loss to Boston.
- This was a big win for the Thunder. Sounds a little silly to say that on Nov. 12. But keep in mind that division winners automatically earn a top four seed and home-court advantage in the playoffs. And two early victories over a division heavyweight like Portland can come back into play at the end of the season. When the dust starts settling on conference standings, and tiebreakers and such may be needed to determine playoff seeding, we could look back on these first two games as being pivotal victories.
- Was I the only one who had flashbacks to Carmelo Anthony when Rudy Fernandez hoisted that 3 from the left corner? I didn’t think so.
How Good Do These Guys Wanna Be?
FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. — Let’s start with the numbers.
Steals: 18.
Opponent turnovers: 27.
Points off turnovers: 35.
Points allowed: 93.
If these four categories were all you had to base the Thunder’s defensive performance on (which is precisely all that about 99 percent of you have since the game wasn’t televised), you’d say it was a great day at the office for OKC, right?
Apparently not.
“I think it was solid,” said Thunder coach Scott Brooks after his team’s 97-93 win over Charlotte on Wednesday. “We did a lot of things good, but we have to work on a few things.”
Now wait a minute. That’s just more never-satisfied coach speak, right? Surely the players thought differently.
“About a C,” Jeff Green said. “I don’t think we did a terrific job.”
Makes you wonder what terrific D looks like for the Thunder.
The only legitimate complaints anyone could have after Wednesday’s effort was the 47.8 percent shooting the Thunder allowed to the Bobcats. That figure was 50 percent after the first half, when most of the customary players logged their minutes. And a 20-5 Charlotte run over the first 6 minutes, 47 seconds of the third quarter should also garner ample attention.
Everything else was minor, and this, after all, was just the preseason debut. Even if the box score didn’t reflect it on this night, the defensive effort was on display throughout much of the game. Now, was it playoff ready? Hardly. But did it surpass preseason form? Absolutely.
Thunder players shouted instructions and assignments to one another. They rotated and helped and closed out on shooters. They flew to the ball and gathered as a unit at the rim and collapsed on Charlotte’s weapons and played the passing lanes with a purpose. James Harden had a game-high five steals. Royal Ivey came off the bench and came up with four.
Brooks, however, said the aggressiveness was not a part of the plan.
“We don’t go into the game looking to play the passing lanes as far as we did,” Brooks said. “It got us in trouble. We did get some steals, but we gave up a lot of easy shots in the first half. That’s one of the things we got to clean up. We got to commit to our defense and stay with it. If the lanes are there and we can get a for-sure deflection or steal then we can go for it. But we were being a little overzealous on that and it hurt us at times.”
Not all of the Bobcats’ 27 turnovers were forced. Charlotte wasted multiple fast-break chances by simply throwing the ball away. But many of the Thunder’s steals came in Charlotte’s half-court offense, and OKC turned many of those takeaways into points.
Brooks was most pleased with the shell defense his team displayed in the fourth quarter, when the Thunder outscored the Bobcats 16-12 and saw Charlotte’s interior passing cut get cut off more than at any other point int the game. The lineup that was son the court during the moment Brooks gave the highest praise consisted of Eric Maynor, Royal Ivey, Elijah Millsap, D.J. White and either Serge Ibaka or Cole Aldrich.
“That was the shell defense at its finest right there,” Brooks said. “That was the thing I liked best about our game tonight, that fourth quarter defense, guys were really doing a great job of sticking with the system and shutting down the passing lanes and not giving them any easy buckets. I think we did a good job of really forcing them to make tough shots.”
-DM-
Open Scrimmage A Smashing Success
A pair of City of Yukon police officers stood stationed at the front doors of the Yukon High School gymnasium.
By 5:30 p.m. on Friday, their job description called for controlling the crowd as well as playing the role of bad cop and telling a line of eager men and women, boys and girls, that they could no longer enter the building.
The Oklahoma City Thunder’s annual open scrimmage had reached capacity.
Turning away fans at the door is not something the organization wanted to do. But the unfortunate rejections illustrated just how much Thunder mania has swept the state. To the naked eye, Friday’s crowd appeared to have doubled the tally at last year’s event at Midwest City High. Thunder officials estimated 3,500 fans attended the scrimmage, which is 1,300 more than what the school’s web site says the gym can hold for basketball. Fans who were denied admission were offered T-shirts and a voucher to a future game, according to a high-ranking team official.
But the turnout was just what the Thunder had in mind when it partnered with Yukon High. The showcase allowed the Thunder to continue its community-oriented initiatives while simultaneously building its brand. And there is no doubt some fans who perhaps ordinarily would not have attended a Yukon High football game wandered over and supported the home team against Norman North. It was a great night all around.
“We had a lot of fun giving the fans a chance to come out and see our team this year,” said Jeff Green. “We had fun with it. We enjoyed it. We played hard and that was good. It was a good team effort out there so we had fun.”
Green said he was surprised to see so many fans in attendance.
“We saw them when we were pulling up,” he said. “The line was around the school. It was pretty overwhelming.”
No one seemed more excited and appreciative of the turnout than Thunder coach Scott Brooks.
“I’ll tell you what, the city of Yukon, the school district and Yukon High were just amazing,” Brooks said. “It was just another great example of the support we get in this state. It’s overwhelming. Our players were so fired up. Just getting off the bus and seeing the marching band and hundreds of hundreds of kids lining up and high-fiving our players. It’s a treat for them but it’s also a treat for our players. You never get tired of people coming out and supporting you the way we get supported in this state. It’s terrific.”
As for the basketball side of things…
