Bucks handle Thunder, spoil Anthony Morrow’s debut
In my preview of Tuesday’s matchup between the Oklahoma City Thunder and the Bucks I talked about OKC building off of what had been their most complete performance of the season on Sunday evening. Going up against a young team coming off of a 15 win season, I didn’t think that was too much to ask.
Clearly it was.
The Thunder took a step in the wrong direction on Tuesday night in Milwaukee. They were flat. They lacked energy and more importantly, they lacked focus. They let an inferior team run them off the floor and it looked like they didn’t even care. By the end of the 85-78 Bucks win, the Thunder players looked like all they wanted was to get as far away from the state of Wisconsin as possible.
Yeah, the Thunder is banged up, everyone knows that. Obviously it hurts the team to be without two of the best players in the league but it is no excuse for how they played last night. If anything, a team missing its star players should come out with more focus and with more energy. The Thunder’s 10 point lead early in the second quarter started to slip away and rather than fight to hang on, they folded over and the Bucks never looked back. OKC was in it at times throughout the rest of the game, but it was clear that Milwaukee had the edge.
So where do we start? Maybe with 78 points.
This is the part of the post where a recurring theme starts to become clear. Missing your stars isn’t an excuse for scoring 78 points in an NBA game.
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I don’t care how good the Bucks have been defensively (5th in opponents PPG entering game, now 3rd). 78 points is simply unacceptable. There are going to be nights when shots aren’t falling, and last night was one of them. Those are the nights that you need to work even harder to get good shots. The Thunder did the opposite of that. Rather than focusing on running their sets and playing within the system to get good shots, the Thunder completely abandoned their offense, resorting to high pick and roll plays that usually led to errant runners in the lane or contested jumpers off of kick outs.
Here are some notes I took while re-watching the game this morning:
- Reggie Jackson is surely earning himself some money with his performances during this stretch without Russ and KD, but I’m not quite sure if he will be deserving. I’ve always liked Reggie’s game, but it seems like he cannot be effective without hurting the value of his teammates. He may not like it but his NBA destiny might just be as a scoring 6th man.
- Perk has been outstanding. Last night he scored 7 points on 3-4 shooting while also grabbing 9 rebounds and blocking 2 shots IN ONLY 20 MINUTES! The big man said before the season that he wants to give Scott Brooks a reason to play him late in games and he is doing just that.
Jeff Hanisch-USA TODAY Sports
- Anthony Morrow looked pretty good in his Thunder debut. It was clear that he was a bit rusty to start and needed to get used to the speed of the game but once he settled down things looked pretty good.
- Steven Adams post-ups are pretty damn ugly. He looks like he has no idea what he is doing and only has one move, where he dribbles to the middle of the lane and puts up a hook shot.
- Wake up Jeremy Lamb.
- Teams are figuring out that if you can close out on Serge and stop him from shooting directly off of a catch, he’s pretty much screwed.
- I said it already but… PERK. I am very happy for the big fella. Such a great guy and teammate.
It is clear that the Thunder have plenty of work to do offensively and not much time to get it done as they will be taking on the Celtics tonight.