Oklahoma City Thunder 2017-18

[Anonymous.]

Paul George's offense has arrived in OKC.

[Laramie]

.

Oklahoma City Thunder 121 - Detroit Pistons 108

Box score: http://www.espn.com/nba/boxscore?gameId=400975470

Carmello Anthony 25,004 career points.
Westbrook triple double 31pts, 11 reb, 13 ast
Thunder 7 game win streak

[Jake]

Roberson out for the season. There goes any slim title chance hopes we had

[dankrutka]

Roberson out for the season. There goes any slim title chance hopes we had

Yeah, probably. Massive loss. But maybe OKC can find an expiring 2 from a bad team before the trade deadline. No one can replace Roberson defensively, but maybe there’s a 2-way player that could help. Unfortunately, I’m afraid OKC might have to mortgage it’s future to get any player worthwhile.

[Jake]

Well, at least Huestis and Ferguson will get a lot of experience out of this.

[Urbanized]

Not sure Thunder was truly in the mix for a championship this year but yeah, that definitely takes a hit. That said, if it would cause one or more players to become more intentional on defense to make up for the loss - especially Russ, who could surely be elite - and if someone like T Ferg or Huestis steps up in a big way, plus maybe one personnel move, I think they could still do about as well as they probably would have anyway. Not to minimize the Robes loss, which is massive.

[Anonymous.]

Yea this pretty much just removed our entire weapon against GSW/HOU. I feel so bad for Roberson, the dude finally had his role down to a science. The look on Russ's face when he saw Roberson laying there and Roberson was saying "yea it's done" was completely heartbreaking. Roberson is still young, hopefully this isn't going to alter his career's big picture like this same injury has done to many before him.

[Easy180]

Shooters can somewhat afford to be a step slower after serious injuries. Defensive specialists can’t afford to lose that step so this is not good news at all.

[Laramie]

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Oklahoma City Thunder 122 - Philadelphia 76ers 112

Box score: http://www.espn.com/nba/boxscore?gameId=400975482

[dankrutka]

Great win tonight. OKC needs to figure out a way to get a consistent player who the team can count on because they have a lot of young, inconsistent ones (Ferguson, Huestis, Abrines, Grant). Unfortunately, OKC can't take on much more money. Here are some shooting guard possibilities who are on reasonable contracts:
- Avery Bradley
- Marco Belinelli
- Tyreke Evans
- Rodney Hood
- Caris LeVert
- Joe Harris
Any of those guys would be a significant upgrade.

[Anonymous.]

Clippers are currently blowing it up. I am sure Presti is on about 3 phones right now.

[Bellaboo]

Clippers are currently blowing it up. I am sure Presti is on about 3 phones right now.

Blake to Detroit - Tobias Harris and 2 others to Clips.

[Laramie]

Who's next on the Clippers chopping block, DeAndre Jordan?

Blake had an opportunity to return home, oh well, he'll love Detroit.

[Anonymous.]

Russ was due for a bad game. And we still had a shot to win it. Heustis made like 3 bone-headed moves right @ the end that sealed it for WAS.

Also are we back to freezing out PG in the 4th now???

[king183]

Russ was due for a bad game. And we still had a shot to win it. Heustis made like 3 bone-headed moves right @ the end that sealed it for WAS.

Also are we back to freezing out PG in the 4th now???

It was just a really bad game all around. Russ was bad, Anthony wasn't hitting, Huestis made really dumb mistakes in quick succession, as did Adams who passed up a wide-open dunk (literally no one was standing near him--Russ's face was hilarious) and then unnecessarily fouled in the last 40 seconds, sending them to the free throw line. But we are in the middle of a tiring schedule.

[dankrutka]

One thing that’s showing up big tonight. Russ is, and always has been, an extremely lazy defender. When Roberson went down there’s s hope he’d step up... he’s been worse. Sometimes he’s just mentally lazy (e.g., go for easy steal instead of playing sound D), but a lot of times he’s just physically lazy. I get that he has a big offensive load, but it’s frustrating. Nothing new, but frustrating. /rant over

[Jake]

One thing that’s showing up big tonight. Russ is, and always has been, an extremely lazy defender. When Roberson went down there’s s hope he’d step up... he’s been worse. Sometimes he’s just mentally lazy (e.g., go for easy steal instead of playing sound D), but a lot of times he’s just physically lazy. I get that he has a big offensive load, but it’s frustrating. Nothing new, but frustrating. /rant over

A thousand times this ^^^

For all the crap people give Harden for his defensive abilities (or lack thereof), Westbrook is a legitamately bad defender a lot of times. It's frustrating, because he has all the athletic tools to be at least a passable level defender. Frustrating.

[dankrutka]

A thousand times this ^^^

For all the crap people give Harden for his defensive abilities (or lack thereof), Westbrook is a legitamately bad defender a lot of times. It's frustrating, because he has all the athletic tools to be at least a passable level defender. Frustrating.

On cue: Russ literally didn’t even pay attention to his man on an in bounds play with 1 second left and gave up the game winner. Again, not surprising. Russ has always been like this and it won’t change, but it sure is frustrating.

[Jake]

Roberson hides a lot of the team's deficiencies on defense as a whole, but especially Westbrook's.

Westbrook could essentially do what he wanted on the defensive end; cheat, go for steals, etc, and Roberson would be able to switch over and cover his man. Without him, Westbrook can't do that and it really shows. He has no idea what he's doing half the time on defense.

It'll be interesting to see if/when Presti makes any moves to help out.

[Anonymous.]

Man... Another game winner against OKC.

PG is playing out of his mind right now, if we can get the defense back to something manageable sans Roberson, we will be a legit team. Russ is in a small slump, but he is still clutch. And I agree with the posters above, if he had just stuck to his man - we would likely be fighting in OT in DEN.

[dankrutka]

The team is still trending in the right direction. It’ll be interesting to see who/if OKC can get in the coming days...

[Celebrator]

We really didn't deserve to win after we let them score that many points in the first half and they got revenge they wanted for this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVW2TqpFpAs last night

[Bellaboo]

There was a report out that the in bound player (Jokic) took four small steps which should have been called as a turnover. He also went to the 5 second count. Another turnover. The refs swallowed their whistles again.

With the come back in the last 6 minutes, I have confidence that we would have won the game in overtime. Oh well.

[dankrutka]

On cue: Russ literally didn’t even pay attention to his man on an in bounds play with 1 second left and gave up the game winner. Again, not surprising. Russ has always been like this and it won’t change, but it sure is frustrating.

To be fair, here's another take on that final play:

@HPbasketball: On the final play, as I discussed on @FredKatz’ podcast: I genuinely don’t think Russ was being lazy. He’s tracking Jokic’s eyes, which go to the rim. He’s worried about a lob. It’s bad awareness, not effort. He closed out like a demon, too, got a piece of the ball.

https://twitter.com/HPbasketball/sta...73745797640192

[Anonymous.]

This makes every game winner hit against the Thunder this year (3), being possible only because the refs did not make the correct call.

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