Tuesday Bolts – 2.10.15
Kevin Pelton of ESPN Insider on playoff chances: “Still, after Sunday’s 23-point win over the Blake Griffin-less Los Angeles Clippers and Phoenix’s loss at the buzzer, the Thunder find themselves leading the race for eighth in terms of projections. Oklahoma City is now just a game back in the loss column and has gone 15-8 (.652) in games Durant has started and finished, a far better mark than the Suns (.547) or Pelicans (.529) over the course of the season. The win over the Clippers was intriguing because the Thunder’s 131 points contrasted with their difficulty scoring in recent games. Before Sunday, Oklahoma City was scoring at exactly an average rate relative to its opponents’ season-long performance in the 23 complete games Durant has played.”
Anthony Slater: “Over the past few months, Russell Westbrook has wowed us with his corralled ferocity, playing at a controlled speed it often appears other basketball players aren’t capable of reaching. That’s his way of taking basketball viewers to peak entertainment level. But it’s not the only way. Just watch Steph Curry on a night-to-night basis. Or think back to patches of Durant’s MVP campaign. The 3-point shot, when a player is unconscious, is just as mesmerizing as a string of powerful dunks or flurry of end-to-end transition buckets. Durant took us there late in that first half on Monday. And, for good measure, he remained hot the rest of the game, finishing with 40 points on 19 shots (only the fifth guy to do that this season).”
Jon Hamm for NewsOK on leaning heavily on stars: “It’s an interesting contrast to the decisions the Thunder have made. The Thunder devotes significant resources to drafting and developing talent. They tread lightly into free agent waters and shop very conservatively, often to the chagrin of observers. The plan all along has been to cultivate a deep roster that can adapt to occasional and prolonged absences. The risk with this plan is bringing in players that don’t pan out, or developing talent that outgrows their role. Some teams prefer broken-in horses to foals. There’s no clear-cut winner between these two models, but one does offer more potential long-term stability. The Thunder has five-year plans whereas the Clippers are living year-to-year, if not week-to-week. It’s a situation that could have been easier to manage had the Clippers made a few smarter decisions over the years.”
Steven Adams is offering up a challenge.
Darnell Mayberry: “Playing its first game since Steven Adams underwent surgery to repair a fractured right hand, an injury that is expected to cost the team’s starting center at least three weeks of basketball, the Thunder promoted Perkins to the first team and looked to keep plugging along in its continued climb into the Western Conference playoff picture. By pairing Perkins with Andre Roberson, however, the Thunder flirted with trotting out an offensively-challenged first five primarily due to the limitations of Roberson and Perkins. But on this night, the Thunder found few problems.”
Eric Freeman of BDL on KD’s explosion: “Yet Durant has a tendency to make really good players seem normal. Few players in history have been able to score in so many ways with such regularity. If the Thunder sometimes appear too dependent on Durant and Westbrook for their own good, then it may be because its very easy to rest on the laurels of two guys who provide so much. Sometimes one absurdly efficient 40-point performance seems like enough to conquer the league.”
Albert Burneko of Deadspin: “Durant’s missed a bunch of games this season, and not quite been himself much of the rest of the time. That’s exposed the talent-poverty of the rest of OKC’s non-Russ rotation, and/or coach Scott Brooks’s inability to get much out of players who can’t score baskets as easily as the rest of us shed skin cells; as a result, the Thunder are sitting a game-and-a-half out of the West’s eighth playoff spot. A vintage Durant performance like last night’s suggests the reigning MVP might be finding his stride, and that’s an ominous portent for the handful of teams jostling for spots in a Western bracket that can’t fit them all. Or anyway, it sure as hell sucked for the poor Nuggets. Kevin Durant isn’t like the rest of us.”
