Monday Bolts – 12.29.14
Tim MacMahon of ESPN Dallas: “It seemed like Westbrook was on the verge of taking over the game when he scored on back-to-back possessions to give the Thunder the lead with a little more than four minutes remaining. The Thunder point guard’s offensive stats the rest of the game: no points, two missed field goals, two turnovers.”
Darnell Mayberry: “Here we go again. Thunder players are talking about trust. That, of course, has become the go-to buzzword whenever the ball stops moving, the offense breaks down and Oklahoma City suffers the same type of avoidable loss as it did in its 112-107 defeat at Dallas on Sunday night.”
Rick Carlisle on how he came up with last night’s starting five: “I took a nap earlier today and I had a dream that I was coaching against a Don Nelson team. Then I got up and I checked my phone and there was a text from Casey Smith saying Tyson was out tonight. It just got me thinking that we needed to try something different against this team because athletically and strength wise we just don’t matchup. It was a bit of a whimsical thing but I talked to Dirk about it and he was fine with it so we just took a shot with it.”
Last night was the total Russ experience.
Rob Mahoney of SI.com on the Suns battling in the West: “Even with Kevin Durant sidelined by an ankle injury, Oklahoma City is a threat to supplant Phoenix any minute. A race against the Thunder is exactly that dire. In fact, a determination of the eight Western Conference playoff teams may have already been made with Phoenix and OKC locked into a virtual draw at this stage in the season and no other postseason candidate likely to be displaced. The Suns weren’t going deep into the postseason to pose any kind of credible challenge. Yet the sheer depth of the West’s ranks has to register as some kind of disappointment, given that no team was better prepared to push for a playoff spot in the event that any shook loose.”
Chris Ballard of SI.com with an interesting look into injuries: “What P3 does is not unique. Dynamic Athletic Research Institute (DARI) also uses motion capture. So does Catapult, the Australian company that popularized the inertial sensors used by many NFL and NBA teams and other pro athletes around the world. Meanwhile, more and more teams and performance centers are investing in force plates and 3-D motion-capture systems. P3’s advantage lies in its hard drives. The company has assessed more than 100 NBA, 120 MLB and 100 other pro and Olympic athletes, from tennis players to cyclists. What’s more, many are tested repeatedly, over a period of years. This gives P3 the most valuable commodity in analytics: context.”
