The Side Part: This is the end?
NBAE/Getty
Suns
Rockets
Timberwolves
Spurs
That’s the Pelicans remaining schedule.
Kings
Pacers
Blazers
Timberwolves
And that’s the Thunder’s.
The Thunder are in a better position. Their schedule is, theoretically, weaker than the Pellies. But the Devil’s Advocate would say that the Suns may be reeling after missing out on the playoffs, and the Spurs may be resting guys, assuming they can’t get or don’t care about getting the fifth seed, and you can’t trust the Rockets…
All that to say, this is foreign and weird. Not since 2009-2010 have the Thunder had to feel even a version of this. Westbrook said as much, calling all of this “different.” This is the first time in a long time that Thunder fans have had to stay in the know about another team’s performance that wasn’t theirs. I’m looking at Pelicans stuff as often as I look at the Thunder’s. It’s a weird feeling. I’ve never known that I could have an opinion on Quincy Pondexter. I thought he was like Alicia Keys or 7 Up: something to just be neutral about.
I have, for a brief period of time, made the Pellies one of my favorite teams on my ESPN app so that I can be updated if anything happens with them. I’d imagine this is what it feels like to stalk someone.
* * *
This is my (all over the place and probably in some ways repetitive) thought process about everything involving the Thunder, and their chances at getting into the playoffs.
I don’t know what I’d rather have happen. What’s the real difference in a late lotto pick, compared to where the Thunder would pick if they slip into the 8 seed, then get beat out (which, regardless of how optimistic/insane you are is what’s likely to happen if they do get the 8)? Is it great enough to matter? Or no? Are we all resigned to the idea that if we get into the playoffs that the Warriors will Gus Fring us in front of the world? Or do we think we’d have a puncher’s chance if Ibaka somehow came back healthy?
I can’t tell what the general feeling is, because I can’t even really tell what my own personal feeling is. It does seem like the team might save themselves some embarrassment by just missing the playoffs, but then that doesn’t really sound like the Thunder Way, Sam Presti TM. At least not anymore.
I’m so accustomed to this team surprising me, in both good and bad ways, that the optimist in me says — and for no justifiable reason at all, the team’s looked horrible lately — since nobody would expect them to do anything but lay down, maybe they wouldn’t. Maybe they’d dent Steph and his merry men. But that’s almost surely my bias. There is no reason to suggest we’d be that competitive with them. If we won any game against them it’d have to be 184-183, right?
But then I think of that Atlanta game, and how well we played, and how that would suggest that, maybe, it’s possible. And then I think that game was just an exception to what has become the rule: the Thunder are a trash defensive team right now, unable to stop anyone. Slowly adding Roberson back into the fray will put some pressure on the wound, but until Ibaka and Collison return with the tourniquet, it’s going to be a bloody mess.
The basketball world, especially as the playoffs near, becomes one of hyperbole. Things are rarely as good, or as bad, as they appear to be. Take that Memphis series last year, when the whole world about burned down, Mr. Unreliable and all that. I keep reminding myself that often times it’s not as bad as it seems. I hope that’s the case right now.
