(AP Photo/Alonzo Adams)
Well honestly, I’m not sure that could have gone much better.
Oklahoma City’s starting five poured in 91 of the Thunder’s 102 points, as OKC rolled Sacramento 102-89 to open the season 1-0. Which also means we’re enjoying the first winning record in Thunder history.
Now, now before we get ahead of ourselves here we must understand this was a stinky Kings squad. And it’s just one game. Nobody should start dreaming of playoffs or a .500 record or anything like that. Yet.
Yes, everything went very well. If you scripted this out, I’m not sure it would’ve gone this well. OKC started with great energy, basically burying the Kings early. The Thunder outscored Sacto 39-22 in the first and really never looked back. The closest the Kings really got was the 13 they lost by when OKC had scaled everything back. Offensively, the Thunder looked near unstoppable. Weapons everywhere, points from everywhere and crisp, clean ball movement.
Russell Westbrook looked like an absolute STAR going for 14 points on 7-12 shooting, 13 assists, seven boards and just two turnovers. If this happens all season then maybe we can start getting ahead of ourselves. The new and awesomely improved Westbrook was something else. He played with his usual fire and energy, but really harnessed it. He just sees the court and plays so much better. A perfect example among many: the bounce pass to KD for a dunk late in the second quarter. He read everything perfectly and instead of jumping and getting caught mid-air and trying to force it to Durant, he slowed down and made a smart but decisive one-handed bounce pass. That play really summed it all up for me. Westbrook is a new player. A new and much, much better player. And he was pretty good to start with.
Kevin Durant scored and unassuming 25 points and grabbed 11 rebounds, while also dishing out four assists. Jeff Green was 4-5 from deep and had 24 points, eight boards and three blocks. Nenad Krstic had 20 and seven. Thabo Sefolosha scored eight and held Kevin Martin to a 5-19 shooting night. Everything fired on every cylinder tonight.
Speaking of Thabo, he’s off to a good start earning that check he cashed today. He played nice defense on Martin, and was productive offensively. He went 2-2 from 3, 3-7 from the field, had five rebounds and a block. He’s clearly the glue to this team defensively. He helps everywhere, rotates well and is one of the best communicators on that end. Color me happy that we locked him up.
A couple closing thoughts:
- Rumble came out right before the tip with a big bass drum and rolled on it producing a “rumbling” sound. Then he pounded on it slowly starting up a slow clap. I thought it was a nice touch.
- The two inactive players for the game were Byron Mullens and Kyle Weaver. With Thabo’s extension today, Weaver may find himself as the odd man out. I still think he’s worth a roster spot because injuries happen and he’s the perfect, versatile player to step in.
- No Serge Ibaka. No D.J. White. No Shaun Livingston. Not seeing all three sort of surprised me, but it really surprised me that Kevin Ollie is ahead of Livingston in the rotation. Ollie wasn’t bad, but didn’t really do a ton. But when your starter is playing like Westbrook, just giving a spell for a few minutes is enough.
- Thabo’s block on Martin? Delicious.
- Scott Brooks went with an interesting lineup before halftime of Westbrook, Durant, Green, Collison and Krstic. I would assume this is the big lineup that Brooks is going to go with to counter other team’s going big.
- I was a little disappointed with the crowd. The announced attendance was a sellout, but there were some big empty pockets in Loud City. The Kings aren’t the most attractive opponent, but I kind of expected more for opening night.
- The box score doesn’t show it, but I really liked what Etan Thomas gave tonight. Sure he had just two points and one rebound in 18 minutes, but he had a block and played tough, physical defense on the Kings’ big men.
- For his first game ever, James Harden played pretty well. Kevin Martin had his way with him a bit, but Harden was 2-2 from the floor for five points and hit one 3. He played just 13 minutes and I’ve got to think he’ll slowly get more time as the season goes on.
- Omri Casspi really impressed me. He’s going to be a good player.
- It was clearly the starters’ game tonight. Durant played 42 minutes, Green 39, Krstic 30, Westbrook 35 and Thabo 34. I don’t know if any point fewer than three starters weren’t on the floor at a time. And for good reason too: Russ was a +23, Durant a +17 (OH YEAH!), Green a +19, Krstic a +19 and Thabo a +12.
It’s a 13 point win over a poo poo team and exactly what we expected, but dang, it feels good to be 1-0. A loss would have took a lot of air out of us, but not only was this win good, it kind of inflates our balloon even more. It was everything we could have wanted. The Thunder shot 51 percent, went 8-14 from 3, outrebounded Sacto and had just 13 turnovers. Oh, and won 102-89.
Next up, OKC takes its 1.000 winning percentage to Detroit Friday night for a duel with the Pistons.
Royce :The ball movement was awesome. I specifically Russ being open for a drive or shot with about four on the 24, but made a nice extra pass to Jeff Green in the corner for 3. I almost shed a tear it was so beautiful.
amen . . . basketball is such a beautiful game when it's played like that - WONDERFUL ball movement - we looked like a different team (compared to last year) on offense!!!
@Clark Matthews
I think it may have just looked like more than 2 turnovers. I kinda had the same feeling because there were a few times where Russ made a pass that looked like a turnover but the ball ended up going out of bounds off a King (pass to Thabo) or was recovered by OKC after bouncing around (pass to Kristic, pass that bounced off backboard). If the ball had bounced a little differently, or perhaps against a better team, he might have had a few more TOs. Still, Russ looked GOOD running the point.
I had to leave the game at half time and listened on the radio for the second half, but I counted more than two turnovers in just the time I was there. The hometown statistician was doing Russ some favors last night.
However, he definitely looked better than last season. There were a couple of times he grabbed offensive rebounds after some messy play and instead of taking a bad shot, he dribbled out and started the offense with the fresh shot clock. That was definitely something he wouldn't have done in 2008/2009.
This game was a good win for the thunder, to be in the playoff race you gotta beat the bad teams and play tight with the good teams. Nenad needs to send a card to Russ for making him look good. IMO, this game just showed our real need for a halfway decent post player. Nenad is a jump shooter and it showed. Russ made a ton of good passes to Nenad which should’ve turned into AND 1’s/dunks and ended up being 2 foul shots. I mean he’s 7 feet tall and 2 feet from the basket and Russ got the double team, this should be an easy bucket.
Well... Earl is the better shooter... crap.
Damien Wilkins had a buzzer-beating game winner! And Kevin Ollie is the new Earl Watson. Why Damien why!!!!!!!?!???!?
If Westbrook plays all season like he did last night, he will be all-star material.
The ball movement was awesome. I specifically Russ being open for a drive or shot with about four on the 24, but made a nice extra pass to Jeff Green in the corner for 3. I almost shed a tear it was so beautiful.
Now all I have to say is... Ricky who?
and p.s. we are undefeated! hehe
I liked the article yesterday in the Oklahoman about how we need to beat the bad teams. J.G. hit on it just now, but seriously, if this team wants to go anywhere (now or in the future) this is the year they need to beat teams like the Kings and the Timberwolves. Last year the Clippers (!!!) beat us in every game except the last one. That can't happen this year if we want to be seen as a legit team in the league. Getting beat by the Lakers and the Magic and the Spurs is one thing. Getting beat by the Nets and the Bucks and the Clippers would be soemthing all together, and it would really stunt the growth of this team.
However, last night was encouraging in that regard. We had a better team, and we showed it by dominating from the beginning and never letting them make a serious run at us.
Anyone else wish we would have somehow gotten Casspi in the draft? He shot the crap out of the ball and most of his shots were either fading away or he was leaning. It would be really nice to have a guy like that coming off our bench
@Durienne Commentators played that back in slo-mo a couple of times. Tried to give him the nickname "Snapper" because he looked like a turtle.
BTW, That play by Russell passing to KD for the dunk just before the half was a no-look pass...awesome stuff.
Oh... and on the attendance thing. Let's not forget that it was GAME ONE OF THE WORLD SERIES last night....
@Kev
Kevin Martin will make A LOT of defenders look lost, hence why he usually has two or three 40 pt games every year...but yes, you and I both saw the same thing from Harden and it will definitely be a learning process for him when it comes to transitioning from Arizona State's zone only defense to straight up man-to-man against the best scorers in the world.
Though I did like his surprising offensive efficiency.
Other than that, the Kings (like I said last week when everyone was freaking out over nothing) are awful and won't win 20 games this year. Easily the worst team in the NBA, nick. So given that, it's hard to gauge everyone's performance other than to say, "Wow! We're unbeaten and they took care of business against an inferior opponent!"
Which sometimes is the best thing you can say about a young team who has been hyped (a bit overhyped to be honest) all off-season; they went out, showed obvious signs of improvement from last year, put the Kings away early and performed very well despite a few hiccups. Can't really ask for more than that...until Friday night. :)
Good post and good comments by all, what a strangely awesome forum where people say intelligent things.
Can't think of anything that was not touched on by someone. I was going to ask... Green really dominated Nocioni in the post... is that just a well exploited mismatch, or has he really improved that much?
I think we are all missing something big. Durant had 11 boards. 11!!!! He was playing hard on both ends of the court and should have had at least 30-32 points if his shot was falling, or if he gets a few more calls. Russ blew me out of the water with his Jason Kidd esque line.
Also, how about real refs! After this preseason I felt like they did a...good job. Yes, I said it. The referees did a good job.
Man, everyone's said what I wanted to say mostly.
The only thing that hasn't really been touched on (at least, that much) was Krstic last night. I was really impressed with him. Not just having 20 points and showing himself to be a solid third option on offense, but the way he got them. I only remember one (but there were probably two or three) times when he scored on one of his pick and pops. Most of his scoring came down low or at the free throw line. This is encouraging. As good a free throw shooter as he is, if he can continue to get to the line four or five times a game, he's going to help keep us in a lot of games. He was also clearly trying to rebound tonight. I think he ended up with 7? If he goes for 15 and 7 I'll be really happy. I think he can do better. I was really happy with how he played tonight.
Great comments everyone. There seemed to be several possessions in the second half where Green was open in the corner, but we rotated the ball to the other side. Speaking of that, I thought we moved the ball around a lot better. As I recall, we only had one 24-second violation, and very few last second shots.
It was almost funny watching Kevin Martin take Harden to school. Welcome to the league, James. Of course, Martin also did pretty well against Thabo in the first half. I really liked Casspi, and think he was a great get for the Kings. I thought Westbrook and Evans was going to be a fun matchup to watch, but Russ wasn't letting that happen.
Omar :I’m sort of mad that the thunder did so well. I live outside of oklahoma and with that performance I’m very tempted to buy league pass to watch more of them. So basically, Jeff Green owes me $169.
it will be the best $169 you ever spent . . . you're talking about $2 a game for the Thunder games, and throw in another zillion NBA games for free . . .
Thunder Freaking Up, baby! :)
I'm sort of mad that the thunder did so well. I live outside of oklahoma and with that performance I'm very tempted to buy league pass to watch more of them. So basically, Jeff Green owes me $169.
Yeah Kev, I saw Harden playing a zone sort of guarding no one while the whole rest of the team was guarding a man. Not good.
GREAT GAME by Russell!!! I love the line of 14/7/13. He has literally transformed his offensive game overnight. Kudos to him and the coaching staff - we look like a totally different team on offense!!!
Defensive Discussion
Green looks like a different player on defense. Usually he is disinterested when his man doesn’t have the ball, but last night he moved his feet and rotated a lot better than he did last year. He also did better in getting back on defense. Hopefully he keeps this up.
Thabo had an uneven game. He always comes up with some combination of steals and blocks, and he usually has very few “mistakes” (over helping, slow rotation, giving up penetration, getting beat backdoor, slow transition defense . . . etc.) He was guilty of over helping multiple times. You can’t do that when you are guarding the other team’s leading scorer. Also, when we play a better team, this type of approach would kill us.
James Harden was a sieve defensively. He REPEATEDLY gave Kevin Martin free access to the lane. After two minutes of seeing this I was yelling at Scott Brooks through the TV (yes that is stupid), telling him to pull James from the game. He finally heard me. It was so bad that in the second quarter when Thabo was resting, Brooks was forced to have Durant to guard the point guard, Rodriguez. In that lineup Westbrook guarded Kevin Martin. It looked weird to see that combination, but Harden didn’t leave Brooks many options; he was THAT bad on defense. Thabo doesn’t have to worry about losing his spot ANYTIME in the near future.
I live in Virginia and signed up for NBA league Pass. Watched the game last night and was pumped!! Loved every minute of it. I saw lots of improvement. We will lose our share BUT, I feel really good about my team and it's future. GO THUNDER!!!
I'll get the obvious out of the way first: this was the Kings, quite possibly the worst team in the league. With that said, WOW. I just got done watching the first quarter on that League Pass free trial (awesome, by the way), and that was beautiful. Russ looked so under control and made such good decisions. Thabo was everywhere defensively- I don't know how he can close out on someone like Martin and then immediately move his feet to get in front of him- and even knocked down a couple jumpers. Green was excellent and looked comfortable in the post, Krstic was excellent. Hell, KD was probably the least impressive starter in that quarter. They moved the ball, they rotated on D, that was really impressive. Now they just have to do that to a real basketball team, haha
Great! I know they can improve there offense and deffense. Good Luck in all your game.
Haven't seen it mentioned: if you want to see the game, NBA league pass broadband has a 7-day free trial, you can replay the game for 24hrs. http://www.nba.com/leaguepass/online.html
I would take him over Collison anyday.
DubKbee :
On another note… Anyone wish we had taken Dejuan Blaire? 14 and 11 in 23 minutes. whew.
Well, I don't know what exactly we'd have done with him, with our logjam at the 4. But it's shocking -- shocking -- that a guy who was a first-team All-American in college looks like he'll be a very good player in the NBA. Let's all try and remember that next summer when we're hearing about workouts and potential and wingspan. I think Blair is going to make quite a few GM's look very stupid.
All good points and I can't really add nothing, but that i'm gonna enjoy watching Russ this season and how bout KD's 11 rebs folks!
On another note... Anyone wish we had taken Dejuan Blaire? 14 and 11 in 23 minutes. whew.
Someone pointed it out, but there were some close shots missed. Russ could've easily had close to 20 assists honestly.
I was pretty happy with Krstic and think that he will eventually get those close ones to fall. Most of the missed shots, he was doubled and tripled. Ollie though, I really wish I could pick Brooks' brain and find out why he played the starters so long in a blowout and played Ollie for so long. I hope that Livingston is able to get this offense active whenever Russ is out.
Some thoughts:
1) Westbrook looked phenomenal. From the opening tip. There were a couple of flashes of Old Russ but he looked like he'd been playing the point since 6th grade tonight.
2) Green supposedly spent the summer working on post moves, and it looked GOOD. He owned the smaller Nocioni in the post and then went around Thompson on the outside when they switched. His defense was decent against some decent big guys (Thompson and Hawes), and he really showed what a matchup problem he is.
3) Thomas did play well, and having another big man gives Brooks a lot of options. KD played the 2 at the end of the half, and Green played (I'm guessing) 7-8 minutes at the three. Green is really going to be a nightmare for teams if Brooks has the flexibility to move him around a bit.
4) I was beating the drum this summer to trade one (or more) of our picks for a backup PG, and I'm getting back to it. I don't see how we can have Ollie out there 12 minutes a game this year. Obviously, Brooks is not sold on Livingston yet, but we have way too many assets for Ollie to play 1000 minutes this year (or even half that).
5) I'm suprised no one's pointed out that Harden was absolutely dreadful defensively. It's an observation, not a bash -- I understand he's a rookie and Martin is a tough guard. But Harden was yanked early in the 2nd (it seemed) because the Kings got points on 5 straight possessions going right at him. I know it's one game and one matchup, but he'll need significant improvement on that end to be playing starter minutes.
6) Some real big issues showed up -- our defense was better, but still had a few lapses, particularly in the first half. 51 points allowed against the Kings -- who missed a number of close and/or open looks -- is not good enough. Offensively, 34 points in the second half is obviously not great either.
7) We're going 82-0!!!!
It won't be long...
It was a great game but against most other teams the bench is going to be a problem. The lineup with the four bench guys and Kevin Durant was very ineffective. Hopefully James Harden improves over the season to provide some spark off the bench and one of either Serge Ibaka / D.J. White supplants Nick Collison down the line for more energy. Etan Thomas looked active at least.
Above all, though, the offense just stagnated when Russ was out and Ollie was running the show.
Lastly, we really need to get a big that can finish strong in near the bucket. Krstic was great today but he's got to finish a lot of those looks underneath the way he was getting set up by Westbrook. Russ deserved 15-16 assists today IMO..
All our bench was negative in the +/- but I thought Harden played within himself, didn't force anything. Also Etan will be very valuable when we go against the likes of Shaq, Dwight Howard and Andrew Bynum, He is a banger that we missed last season.
@Royce
There was one, I think it was in the third quarter, our offense had stalled and that particular play saw the ball get lost in the paint. Someone kicked it to him at the 3-point line, he pumped, saw Nocioni go flying by, calmly set and nailed the shot. That 3 and Harden's 3 (which came in a similar scenario) were absolute back breakers.
@dylan
You would have been a real American hero.
And Jeff Green was awesome tonight. Every shot he took I thought, "That's in." I love that feeling.
Awesome. I'm sorry I missed it- I had to work. Hope they can keep it rolling now, 81 to go. Also, Westbrook is making me look like a fantasy basketball guru... I'm loving it!
Fridays game vs Detroit is going to be interesting. They have a new coach and new system but have young guys mixed in with veterans and seem to mesh well together. Its going to be a close game, but I can't wait for Friday....
Green looked amazing out there, and I thought he was player of the game. Cool calm collected, made his shots, and played solid defense.
Royce, I wanted to pay my brother 10 bucks to run up to Loud City and yell "LISTEN TO THUNDERIN UP WITH ROYCE AT DAILYTHUNDER.COM" but I don't think he would have gone along with it.
Not enough about Jeff Green as far as I'm concerned. I thought he played an outstanding game. In the first half when he posted Nocioni, spun and dunked between two guys was sick. He showed a solid game from the paint to the three point line. His defense looked good from what I could tell too.
As a side note, near the end of the game did you guys notice our players fighting for who got the rebound amongst themselves. At one point Green grabbed a rebound from Etan and Etan seemed to yell at him in a good natured way. Green went down the floor laughing. I also noticed it between Green and KD one time as well. Thought it was kinda funny, and showed the companionship and competitiveness of the team.
One thing I did't like was the number of shots Durant took. We shot 51% as a team, but he only shot close to 40%. also, 24 shots is just a ton for a team that had everyone else playing hot as well. I'd like to see Durant work a bit more on his PG abilities in order to get the team even more involved. He already knows he's going to get his shots and points, it wouldn't hurt to pass off a 45% shot for him to a 50% shot to someone else.
@King
The first quarter there was a lot of energy. But when OKC jumped out to a big lead, it calmed down quite a bit.
Yeah on TV I noticed there were a few empty seats scattered about. Hopefully it picks up. Shoot, if people don't want to sit in their seats then I'll take their tickets. How was the atmosphere? It was hard to hear anything on T.V. and to me it didn't seem like it was very loud, but I could be totally wrong on that. Great first game overall, really fired up for the rest of the year!
Slow paced game for us at just 90 possessions. RW really controlled the tempo. 113 offensive rating and 99 defensive rating. We won the shooting and the rebounds, lost the line and TO's slightly.
Nice post Royce.
Excellent, or at least much improved defense, and great offense. How about 8/14 from three. Woo hoo. We're taking them and making them.
Very impressed.