Five takeaways from the Thunder’s nail-biting win against Melbourne United
By Tony Heim
A one-point win against an Australia professional team leaves us with a few more questions about this OKC Thunder team.
It’s only the preseason. But that’s not the performance we wanted to see from the Oklahoma City Thunder on their first Sunday matinee of the season.
The Thunder beat Melbourne United 86-85 in an underwhelming performance – it started with the OK3. None of Oklahoma City’s stars shot over 40% from the field, leading to a score that was closer than the game appeared. Melbourne played the Thunder hard for four quarters, but OKC’s overall athleticism and talent on the defensive end proved too much. Especially Steven Adams.
Adams dominated the paint for the third game in a row, this time recording a double-double in his 27 minutes. He grabbed six offensive rebounds and blocked two shots en route to a team-leading +/- of +9. If you’ve read the last two takeaways this is probably getting repetitive to read, but the Big Kiwi is making it impossible for me to ignore him.
While the OK3 struggled the Thunder role players did their duty in tonight’s win. Besides Adams, Andre Roberson and Josh Huestis came up big in their own special way – we might as well get right to it.