OKC road woes continue as Thunder fall short to Hornets

Another road game, another loss – let’s hope this isn’t a repeating Thunder January narrative.

The Thunder were defeated by the Charlotte Hornets on Wednesday night in Charlotte, 123-112.

This was a very strange game. I don’t like doing this, as I feel it’s a bit of a cop-out, but the referees were involved way too much this evening. In total there were 52 fouls called. There were 31 fouls called against the Thunder alone, including an absurd technical foul against Russell Westbrook   who accidentally hit a ref in the head throwing the ball to him.

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The ref clearly wasn’t paying attention, and Russ clearly didn’t mean it, as he apologized profusely afterwards, and the foul will almost assuredly be rescinded in the coming days by the League Office. Charlotte hit 40 of 49 shots from the line this evening, which was unsurprisingly a season high for them.

Although the referees aren’t the main reason Charlotte won the game, it played a significant part in the game. Moreover, It completely killed the flow of the game, and at times made the game completely unbearable.

The Hornets got 6 free throws just on one repeated perimeter play call. In essence, the big would wait an extra second before setting the screen. Then the ball handler weaved from the wing towards the middle of the court.

This forced the defender to hedge over the screen. The resulting effect was the defender was trapped between the screener and the ball handler, who was already shooting and initiating contact to draw the foul. It’s a shame because this should’ve been a fun game to watch.

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The Thunder had ball movement issues early in the game, finishing the first quarter with only 3 assists. They would finish with 22 assists on 42 made field goals, but the offense stagnated far too often for my liking.

The shooting splits were poor on the evening as well, as OKC shot 42-96 from the floor, and an unbearable 9-30 from deep. They did win the battle on the glass however, as they had 51 rebounds to Charlotte’s 43.

The Charlotte pick-and-roll – pop game gave the Thunder defense fits, especially in the first half. They were often left flat footed on rotations, and the defense collapsed far too often on that original action, leaving shooters open all over the court.

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Frank the Tank Kaminsky finished with 17 first half points, but wasn’t heard from in the second half.

Nic Batum led the Hornets with 28 points on 7-18 from the floor and 13-15 from the line.

All the Thunder players who played tonight finished in the minus, with the exception of Alex Abrines , who finished with a +/- of 0. Oklahoma City falls to 21-15 and drops to seventh in the tight Western Conference standings.

But the Thunder will look to bounce back tomorrow night, when they head to Houston to face former Thunder Buddy James Harden and the third seed Rockets.

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