OKC Thunder deliver a stinker in loss to Lakers – player grades

A forgettable effort and night from Terrance Ferguson.  Everyone has those moments but this one felt early like TFerg learned he wouldn’t have to deal with LeBron James and just assumed he’d be able to manage whoever else he covered.

Whether he was on Rajon Rondo, Kyle Kuzma or any Lakers player they seemed to find a way to score and in truth more of this falls on Billy Donovan for not pulling back Mike Muscala who was inept overall and for not getting his club to stop the transition of the Lakers early.

To that end, Billy Donovan gets an F in this one because at least one of those timeouts should’ve been to reinforce the issues the Thunder were allowing on defense and more importantly his substitutions were amiss. It was clear when Muscala and Schroder checked in the game was quickly getting out of hand but instead of taking a chance on Justin Patton for example or even putting in Deonte Burton for effort Donovan stuck with what wasn’t working.

Ferguson had no points, a rebound, two assists, a steal and was a team worst minus 31 on the night. Although Ferg has feasted this season and had arguably his very best effort versus the Rockets shutting down James Harden, this was equally his worst performance of the season.

It’s hard to fault Danilo Gallinari who did his best to keep the OKC Thunder in this match early and was one of the few players who was defending for the few minutes he remained in the game after the initial substitutions.

Whereas SGA tried to instill his will late in the match Gallo tried this best to be a factor from the tip. Was he perfect – no but he was his typically efficient self equalling Shai’s 24 point effort also on 8 of 17 but he was also efficient from deep (4 of 9) with 4 of 4 from the line adding 2 rebounds and three assists.

The loss isn’t on the big man but again no one gets an A tonight.

Early on it made no sense why the team didn’t go inside more to Adams. He was outplaying McGee and the team failed to capitalize on that factor.

This loss does not fall on Adams as the Thunder was only down by four when he was subbed out. Not having Nerlens Noel hurt more in this match than any other because Adams can’t play 48 minutes in a regular season match.

Adams delivered 12 points on 60 percent from the field (6 of 10), adding eight rebounds, an assist, two steals, and a block.

By the time Donovan put him back in the game at 1:47 of the first, the Thunder were trailing 34-17 and none of the three shots by Kuzma had anything to do with Adams defensive coverage so again this one isn’t on Adams who maybe should be demanding the ball more from Schroder who forced his own shot to the detriment of the team.