Thunder drop third straight despite 49 points from Russ
By Rich Condon
The Oklahoma City Thunder were defeated by former Thunder Buddy James Harden and the Houston Rockets 118-116 in Houston on Thursday.
Tonight was the second night of a road back-to-back, and the month of January has not been kind to the Thunder. They’ve yet to win in the new year, losing all three games in January thus far. They’ve lost 4 of their last 5 dating back to the end of December.
The Thunder shot 63% from the field in the first quarter. It looked like, for a minute, that they’d be able to keep up with the Houston scoring machine. They cooled off considerably, however, and would finish the evening shooting 45% from the field. Nobody on the Thunder even showed up to play really until the fourth quarter.
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Instead, they relied on an amazing performance from Russell Westbrook, who finished with 49 points, to keep them in the game. The Thunder were behind on every rotation defensively and with only 15 assists on 41 made buckets, ball movement was all but forgotten. After coming up big in the last two games, Steven Adams disappeared tonight. He only took 6 shots in 29 minutes.
Victor Oladipo has struggled for the most part since returning from his wrist injury. Tonight was no different, as Dipo shot 6-16 for 16 points. There were several possessions where he, and the rest of the Thunder not named Westbrook just sort of stood around on offense. I’d like to see him move off the ball more and create some pressure on the defense. It would stand to reason that that would help alleviate the attention on Russell even a little bit.
Just to put how bad the Thunder were through the first three quarters: Russell had 40 of the Thunder’s 83 points. Yet, the Thunder woke up in the final frame. After allowing the Rockets to put up 30or more points in each of the first three quarters, OKC clamped down defensively and held them to 21 points, while they put up 33.
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The game was tied at 116 with 3.8 seconds left. Eric Gordon finally inbounded the ball after around 75 timeouts to James Harden. Harden drew a double team at the top of the key and dished to a wide open Nene. Nene drove to the hoop, where he was met, and fouled, by Jerami Grant, who rotated over too late. Nene would sink the two free throws that would ultimately decide the game.
However, before that, on the Thunder’s last possession (not counting the last desperation inbound), Russ did it again. I’m so sick of seeing Russ dribble the ball behind the three point line as the clock runs down in game winning situations. You know he’s going to shoot a three, and the chances of it going in are slim to none. Especially after he had already taken 34 shots on the evening.
All-in-all tonight was just a bad look for the Thunder, even though Russ finished with 49. 6 Houston players finished the evening with double digit points. The Thunder have tomorrow off before a home game against the Denver Nuggets on Saturday night.