At the end of every game, Welcome To Loud City hands out its awards; Thunder Wonder, Blunder, Down Under, and Plunderer. Throughout the season, I've been keeping a running tally of the award recipients in order to award our annual and highly cherished "End of Year Awards." Awards are presented to the player who had accumulated the most of a given award over the course of a year.
It's been a wild and wacky shortened season, and, unfortunately, it ended in disappointment tonight. Despite Scott Brooks pulling his starters yesterday against the Kings, he decided to play things a big differently tonight and put his starters back in. But, disappointingly, the Thunder starters flat out lost this game.
In a meaningless game, there's usually not much to cheer for. Fans of bad teams turn into vipers and just want to tank for a good pick, and fans of good teams usually just sit there hoping their star players don't get injured. But this game....was different.
What if World Peace never hit Harden with his elbow? Would the Thunder have won this game? What if both of the Thunder's plays at the end of regulation and the end of OT weren't ridiculously low percentage threes? What if Kobe Bryant wasn't the greatest clutch player of all time? What if I ate a hamburger for lunch instead of a chicken sandwich?
The Thunder started out from behind in this one, climbed back into competitiveness, gained a lead in the third, and maintained it throughout the fourth. They never managed to completely pull away, but the Kings never really threatened to make a serious run.
"I think once anybody gets into a groove and their shots start flowing, their confidence gets higher." -James Harden
The Thunder dominated the first half, and played excellent defense throughout. But they lost. Because of a terrible, terrible second half offensive collapse.
You know, I really didn't think the Timberwolves could even come close to challenging for a win. And usually when things don't turn out how I thought they would, I say that the Thunder didn't do X well, or the Thunder didn't do Y. But tonight, I think I'm going to take a different approach.
The Thunder outright dominated this one. The game was basically over by the half.
After two games of delusion against the Eastern Conference, the Thunder are back in the reality of their situation. Deep in the fourth quarter, the Thunder's offense went scoreless over a critical and nearly 3 minute stretch. But it's not even that that's the most disconcerting.
