The Oklahoma City Blue played much like their NBA brethren this past week, going 0-2 in the middle of their five game home-stand.
Bad Losses
The Oklahoma City Blue’s first loss came against the Iowa Energy, who happen to sport the D-League’s worst record. The Blue lost that game by a score of 105-95. They finished shooting 4-29 from three-point range, which is a whopping 14% (talk about deja vu for Thunder fans).
There weren’t many good things to take away from this performance as the starters were a combined -73 throughout the game. The defense was bad as well as the Energy had seven of their 12 rotation players score in double figures.
Josh Huestis, the third-string small forward for the Thunder, joined the Blue this week to stay active; that obviously didn’t help the team much in terms of production.
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In the next contest, the Blue lost to the Northern Arizona Suns on Sunday by a score of 91-85. As a team, the Blue shot 23% from long range. That number is better than their showing on Friday, but it is still horrible overall. Huestis couldn’t buy a bucket in this one, going 1-12 from the field. In 31 minutes of inefficient playing time he posted a -17 plus/minus.
Silver Linings
Dakari Johnson was inactive in the Suns game, which a big reason why they lost. However, Kaleb Tarczewski stepped up in his absence by scoring 20 points to go along with five rebounds without missing a field goal. Another player that stepped up was Daniel Hamilton, who scored 28 points with 12 rebounds and eight assists. Hamilton did record nine turnovers, but Thunder fans know numbers like 28-12-8 make the turnovers hurt a litte less.
A Look Ahead
The Oklahoma City Blue only play one game this week, a Wednesday contest against the Long Island Nets. Fun fact about this game, it will be played at Chesapeake Energy Arena, home of the Oklahoma City Thunder!
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The Blue are facing off against the Nets for the first time this season. They are not a very good team with a record of 14-26, but seeing how OKC just blew two games against bad competition this game could be a good one.
Players to watch from the Nets include RJ Hunter and Cliff Alexander, who finished their last game with 27 and 28 points off the bench respectively. Daniel Hamilton is going to have to come up big in this game for them to remain competitive. Most importantly, the bench has to remain strong defensively.
The Blue will look to rebound from an embarrassing week and rack up a couple more wins with only eight games left in the season.