Thunder Stay Close With Improved Effort, Spurs Take The Win 99-89

I have to start out and just vent a little bit about how pissed off I am that I'm unable to give you a more detailed game recap. It was just one thing after another tonight. The first part was my fault because I was late getting my daily workout in, and was working out while trying to keep tabs on the early going of this ballgame. Even that was interrupted by the real world phone calls from work which continued off and on throughout the night. When it was all said and done, by the time I was able to sit down and really watch this game, the Spurs were pulling away late in the 4th quarter as the Thunder were going through a bit of a scoring drought. From what I can tell, it was a pretty competitive game throughout with both teams separated by only 2 points heading into the 4th. The final quarter, however, was dominated by the Spurs as they ran away with the win. The Final Score in this one was 99-89.

It was definitely the usual suspects doing the damage for the Spurs tonight. One look at the box score was enough to tell me that. Tim Duncan finished with 25 points, 15 rebounds, and 3 blocked shots. It's clearly evident to anyone that he read my Thunder Gameday Preview, that he was motivated soley by me and my hatred for him. In addition to Duncan, Tony Parker was the other guy apparently wreaking havoc on the Thunder defense tonight. Parker has 21 points, a whopping 10 assists, and 5 steals. Both of these guys delivered huge numbers for a team that needed them to, after the loss of Manu Ginobili for the rest of the season.

For the Thunder, the biggest surprise was the way Thabo Sefolosha came out shooting the ball. If I'm not mistaken, he had 10 points in the first half of the first quarter. Unfortunately, his streaky hot shooting early, didn't continue and he finished with only 13 points after his torrid start. He only missed three shots all night, so its not like he got cold, just looks like he stopped getting opportunities, he did make up for it with 9 rebounds. Kevin Durant lead the team in scoring with 24 points,  and also had 7 boards, and 6 assists. Other than that, nobody really put up any numbers that just stand out at you while looking at the box score. Shaun Livingston and D.J. White continued to get minutes and finished with 17 and 15 respectively. Neither made a huge impact on the stat sheet.

Man, I really hate having to do a game recap off of the stat sheet, and yeah, I probably could have faked my way through this like I watched the game, but this isn't journalism, its blogging, and I want to keep things real and honest. So my apologies for not being able to provide the usual insight, and hopefully tomorrow night will be a bit of a different story. Thunder are making the short trip up to Denver to take on the Nuggets, before heading back home on Friday for the Home Season Finale at the Ford Center.