Tuesday Bolts – 4.14.15
Andrew Gilman of Fox Sports Southwest: “But it’s OK to cheer for the Spurs, and Westbrook will be, too. He’d never say so. You don’t have to, either, but you should. This Thunder team, this season, isn’t championship worthy. There’s no Serge Ibaka or Kevin Durant or a high enough seed to think this could all work somehow. Maybe next year for that kind of talk when Durant and Ibaka return and Anthony Morrow and co. figure to win at a prolific pace. But this season, we deserve to see Westbrook in the playoffs. It’s true. We’re certainly not owed anything, but, c’mon, man, can we have just this one thing?”
Jenni Carlson: “For starters, the Thunder will win. Why? It’s pretty simple. The Timberwolves are terrible. Not-even-trying-to-win terrible. Worse-record-than-even-the-Knicks terrible. You’ll-sprain-your-brain-trying-to-name-more-than-three-starters terrible. Yes, lots of crazy things have happened to the Thunder, but losing to the Timberwolves is beyond even the wacky confines of this season. Now, what of the Pelicans? They will be tipping off in New Orleans at the exact same as the Thunder tips off in Minneapolis. That’s where the similarities between the two games end. The Spurs are on an 11-game winning streak and aren’t resting up for the playoffs like lots of years. They ended Monday night tied for second in the West — but they could finish as low as sixth. They could go from having home-court advantage in the first two rounds to being on the road throughout the playoffs.”
ESPN.com story from last night.
Charles Barkley with some advice for KD: “I saw Kevin Durant arguing with people not too long ago. Kevin Durant is a great, great player and great guy. So some kid he played against in high school made a thing that he kicked all of these NBA guys’s butts in high school and he put KD in there. Meanwhile, this guy is like a plumber. So Kevin Durant and this guy are arguing with each other and I am reading this in a newspaper thinking, ‘Dude, you are Kevin Durant. Why are you arguing with a plumber? (There’s nothing wrong with being a plumber, I might add) but you are Kevin Durant!’ Same thing with RGIII and Colin Kaepernick. I’m like, ‘Dudes, why are you arguing with someone on the Internet?’ I always use this analogy when it comes to sports fans: Just because you watch Grey’s Anatomy doesn’t mean you can perform an operation.”
Would you buy Westbrook’s outfit?
Albert Burneko of Deadspin with some… interesting thoughts: “In truth, only the youth of Oklahoma City’s star players is at odds with the emerging overall picture of a team in decline. The 2012 trade that sent James Harden to Houston for flotsam ought to haunt general manager Sam Presti for the rest of his life: the only defense of it was that it would give him the room and flexibility to build and deepen the Thunder, and he hasn’t made a single move that notably improved the team since. Head coach Scott Brooks still hasn’t figured out a way to integrate his young stars into a scheme that maximizes their talents, rather than their burdens. Unthinkable as this might have seemed three seasons ago, they’re shallow and talent-poor; even at full health, they’re just Durant and Russ with a bunch of guys (Ibaka included) draped around their necks, all of them just kinda taking turns shooting. Now, alarmingly, Durant can’t stay healthy; he’ll enter the last season of his current contract returning from a notoriously tricky and intransigent variety of foot injury.”
Darnell Mayberry: “But with Westbrook running the show, the Thunder led by as many as 16 and never trailed against a Portland team that came into the game missing All-Star forward and leading scorer LaMarcus Aldridge, starting shooting guard Wesley Matthews, his replacement, Arron Afflalo, and backup point guard Steve Blake. The Blazers then lost starting small forward Nicolas Batum to a knee injury in the first half and emergency starting shooting guard C.J. McCollum to a sprained ankle. And with their postseason position solidified, the Blazers rested Damian Lillard down the stretch, sitting him the entire fourth quarter despite being down only six with 5 1/2 minutes remaining. Think the Thunder felt sorry for an undermanned opponent?` Think again.”
Kobe seems to be happy to take up for Russ.
Nick Schwartz of USA Today: “Westbrook has always been a key player for the Thunder, but his usage rate has hit an unprecedented high of 38.1 in 2015. Westbrook’s usage rate has been in the top-3 of all NBA players for the past five seasons, but no other player has cracked 35 since Kobe Bryant in 2005-06 (that Lakers team won 45 games and Bryant scored 35 points per game). Simply put, no team has relied upon a single player to put up gaudy numbers more than the Thunder have relied upon Westbrook this year — and his efforts might not be enough to get Oklahoma City into the playoffs.”
There’s this stat going around — the Thunder are 2-7 when Westbrook scores at least 40 — and I hate these kind of stats. Because last night, he scored 36. Was magically staying under 40 what won it for OKC? Or the games he’s scored 40 and lost — against the Blazers, Suns, Bulls — were those games really on him, or a few isolated plays that didn’t go the Thunder’s way?
Susan Bible of Basketball Insiders on Enes Kanter: “The Thunder had been craving an offensive post presence for a long while, and despite rumors of a Brook Lopez acquisition, they traded Kendrick Perkins, Reggie Jackson, Grant Jerrett, draft rights to Tibor Pleiss and a protected 2017 first-round pick to land Kanter, forwards Kyle Singler and Steve Novak and point guard D.J. Augustin in a three-team trade. Rather than repeating Utah’s attempt to expand Kanter’s range in an ill-fitting role – he attempted 41 three-pointers in Utah this year, but just two in OKC – Thunder coach Scott Brooks is concentrating on taking advantage of Kanter’s true abilities.”
