Thunder win a ‘basketball’ game against the Wolves, 92-84

BOX SCORE

As I typically do, I watched Kevin Durant warm up before the game, and he didn’t look quite right. In between some wincing, he had the Thunder’s team doctor with him on the floor, talking with him between a lot of his shots.

Then the word came about 30 minutes before tipoff: Durant was out against the Wolves with a sprained left big toe. It certainly changed the expectations for the game, but absolutely wasn’t going to excuse anything but a win. The Wolves are terrible, and even without Durant for a night, the Thunder are good enough to handle their business on their home floor.

What we got, though, was 48 minutes of something. It’s a win, which is the most important observation, but it was messy, ugly, no fun basketball.

“I’m surprised you guys stayed,” Scott Brooks said as he sat down for his postgame availability. “I thought there was a peach basket out there for a second.”

The Thunder won the game. Repeat after me: The Thunder won the game. They flirted with disaster for a brief few minutes in the third quarter when the Wolves cut their 8-to-11-point cushion down to three, but a good response had the Thunder up nine headed to the fourth.

There was never an emphatic knockout blow, but the closest the Wolves ever got was seven. Any small push was met with something from the Thunder, specifically from Russell Westbrook who had a miserably poor first three quarters shooting the ball, but came alive with 11 points on 4-6 shooting in the fourth. There were cries for him to relinquish control of the offense to someone else — like say, Reggie Jackson who had a nice game going — but Westbrook is never going to do such a thing. He hit a angled banker, got to the rim in transition, got to the free throw line, and just kept coming until it was enough to put the Wolves away.

Without Durant, obviously all eyes were on Westbrook to shoulder the load, and in the end, he did most of it. But he definitely didn’t play as well as expected. Some of that was the solid on-ball defense by Andrew Wiggins, but a lot of it was that Westbrook was just off and erratic. His rim attacks ended with wild releases high off the backboard. He dribbled into spots with no where to go. And he couldn’t hit anything from the midrange. He was short on every single missed jumper. Second night of a back-to-back, coming off a long road trip — maybe related?

I’m not going to sit here and act like this was some kind of great win for the Thunder, that there’s a positive not to spin because they won without playing well. This is not that kind of win. The only takeaway is exactly that: They won the game. They beat the terrible Wolves, and put this one behind them.

I will say this in addition, though: Now isn’t the time to pine for style points. The NBA is a night-to-night league, with form fluctuating all over. Just because this was a dud performance in a win doesn’t mean it’s a sign of a larger issue. It’s just a bad win against a bad team. Let’s not overthink this.

NOTES:

• One other thing about Westbrook: He was oddly composed tonight. Like he was doing everything in his power not to erupt emotionally. Maybe because he knows he’s getting closer on the tech count, or that his team absolutely couldn’t afford to lose him in this one. But he didn’t interact a lot with his teammates and kept mostly a straight face all night.

• You know that face your wife makes at you where she barely shakes her head and blinks wide-eyed a whole lot because you’ve done something really dumb? Russell Westbrook made that face a lot tonight.

• Serge Ibaka with a nice performance. He had 13 points and 19 rebounds, one off a career-high. In fact, after the game in the locker room, Steven Adams felt bad about taking that 20th rebound away from Ibaka. But Ibaka got involved on the offensive glass, leaving some of the perimeter drifting to instead roll hard to the basket more often. He still hit a 3, though, making it 10 straight games with at least one.

• Big credit to both Steven Adams and Kendrick Perkins for the job they did on Nikola Pekovic tonight — just eight points on 3-12 shooting. And absolutely nothing easy for him. The Wolves don’t have much of an offense, but the one thing they can try to rely on is dumping it to him on the block for something. But both Adams and Perk did a tremendous job pushing him away from the basket on his catches and getting into his right hand when he turned over his left shoulder.

• Adams specifically was excellent. He had eight points, five rebounds and four blocks, but flashed his offensive game a number of times, straight schooling Pekovic on the block. He faced up and took him off the dribble once, and hit a sweet sweeping skyhook early in the third. It’s getting to the point where Adams needs consistent post touches each night. He’s an offensive option to look to.

• Jackson was big. He hit a dagger 3 in the fourth, and just stayed controlled all night. He had 14 on 5-7 shooting in 26 minutes, and seemed to get along well with Dion Waiters in the second unit.

• Waiters played better than his line suggested, I thought. He had 10 on 4-12 shooting, but dished out five assists and attacked the basket with regularity. And he hit a corner 3 on a catch-and-shoot.

• With Durant out, Perry Jones started. And the Thunder ran the opening three plays for him. They came up empty on all three.

• I will say this too: No one has the ability to just exist on a basketball court quite like Perry Jones.

• Anthony Morrow finally hit a 3 tonight, and by millimeters. It looked like he had just hit a second Derek Fisher Memorial 3, but review gave him the three points to get him to 1-7 tonight. And so many of them were clean, open looks. Just in a little slump this month.

• There is a saying that the toughest game is the first one at home coming off a road trip. And this one fell as a back-to-back. If you’re interested in the excuse game.

• How about that play Scott Brooks drew up with 1.6 seconds left before halftime? I don’t care it was by accident la la la la la.

• Nick Collison flirted with a double-double briefly — seven points and eight rebounds and a +16 in 17 minutes. Still the best player on the team, you guys.

• First meeting between Berry Tramel and Westbrook since Good Execution-gate. Was actually kind of comical tonight. Westbrook was answering a different question and gave a lengthy pause that seemed like he was finished, but he wasn’t. So completely inadvertently, Tramel started talking at the same time as Westbrook. So Russ deftly said another few words and seemed to slap a big period on his sentence. But as soon as Tramel started asking his question, Westbrook started talking again, clear with intent this time around. It was pretty funny, I thought. More good-natured than anything else. And for the record: Westbrook answered the question Tramel asked. With five words, albeit, but he answered it.

• Andrew Wiggins is going to be such a star. That dude has it.

• Here’s the thing about Perk postups and why I love them, even when they fail spectacularly: Basketball is supposed to be entertainment, right? Well, I don’t always go to the movies to see a Best Picture candidate. Sometimes I just want to see something horrible and laugh at it.

• Scott Brooks said the team still intends to travel to New York tomorrow, and pushed their flight back later in the afternoon.

Next up: Maybe at the Knicks on Wednesday