Tuesday Bolts – 12.17.13
Kyle Wagner of Deadspin on teams out of timeouts: “At the bottom, you have teams like Cleveland, Oklahoma City, and perplexingly, the Spurs. You’d guess that Mike Brown and Scotty Brooks would end up on this list—your eyes don’t lie to you that badly—but Pop? Greg Popovich’s team is known for its dizzying ball movement and gorgeous set plays, so what gives? Part of it could be that not every team is going to use its timeouts the same. San Antonio has the second best halfcourt offense, behind Miami, is 19-4, and has the highest point differential in the league, so a lot of its timeouts may be being used to insert the bench, or run by a bench unit that’s far inferior to the starters. So that could go some way to explaining away the 17.64 dropoff—but it’s still surprising.”
Matt Moore of CBSSports.com has OKC third in power rankings: “This team is just flying around delivering jump kicks to everyone. They’re the kung-fu movie of basketball. Scott Brooks needs a robe and some wicked facial hair.”
John Schuhmann of NBA.com has OKC third: “The Thunder were already winning, even though their starters were playing pretty badly. Now they’re getting off to better starts and their bench units are still good. The common denominator is Kevin Durant, who has shot 59 percent from the field and 11-for-20 from 3-point range over their six-game winning streak. This is the best team over the last month, allowing only 96 points per 100 possessions.”
Marc Stein has them third: “Two of their losses were on the second night of a back-to-back. Westbrook was still out for the Minnesota loss; Ibaka got ejected from the loss to the Clippers. Throw in the progress made by Reggie Jackson and the odd blip from Jeremy Lamb and OKC is feeling more than OK about itself.”
Justin Kubatko of ESPN Insider: “One of the big themes of the first two months of the 2013-14 NBA season has been the dominance of the Western Conference over the Eastern Conference. In West versus East matchups, the West has a winning percentage of .716, a mark that would obliterate the league record of .633 set by the West in the 2003-04 season. And these games are not particularly close: The average margin of victory is 6.0 points, more than a point per game better than the highest figure prior to this season. But does this matter when it comes to winning championships? The answer is, unsurprisingly, yes.”
Andrew Gilman of Fox Southwest: “I’ve been holding out, but no reason to any more. Lamb has proven, at least for now, the Thunder weren’t left with nothing after Kevin Martin bolted to Minnesota. Lamb didn’t get a lot of playing time last year, but he’s come off the bench and paired with Reggie Jackson to provide a pair of guys who can go get their own shots. Plus, Lamb’s length makes him a viable defender.”
