So I had a much more offensive title to this post, before coming to my senses halfway through writing this recap, I think this one is just as descriptive without being as offensive. Seriously though, we just got beat down and lost by 35 points at home in Loud City. Seriously? I realize that Portland is a damn good team, and we are playing them as they have begun to really hit their stride, but damn, we just beat the freaking' Spurs earlier this week in San Antonio, and this is effort we get at home tonight? Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde are back in full effect, and all the sudden we never know which team we are going to get. Dr Jekyll got the upset win against the Spurs earlier this week and we got stuck with Mr Hyde again tonight.
One positive tonight was the Thunder debut for Shaun Livingston. I've been following Livingston since he joined the D-League 66ers and while I've been impressed with him throughout, I've never seen him play as well as he did tonight. He finished the game with 10 points on 5-6 shooting, had 3 boards, 1 assist, and 1 block. Throughout the game he showed a tremendous ability to pass the ball accurately (at times too good), and was able to manuever offensively without issue, even with the bulky brace. His usual erratic shooting was absent, and in its place was an accurate jumpshot. For having just joined the team, I think the only grade you could give him tonight is an A. Its just too bad the rest of the team didn't play anywhere near as well as he did. You're probably not going to win when the player of the game for your team is making his debut with the team this late in the season.
So can you guess who our leading scorer was? Okay fine, that was easy, it was Kevin Durant, as per usual. The bad part was he only scored 13 points, yes, you read that correctly, our leading scorer had 13 points. Green finished with 12, and Livingston had 10. Those totals are definitely less than spectacular but the worst stats of the night aside from our atrocious 36% shooting percentage was our effort on the boards. What has long been the biggest strong point for this team was an embarrassment tonight. So not only did we lose on the scoreboard by 35 points, but the Blazers also out rebounded us by 25 boards.
They really just came out and manhandled us tonight. There was a stretch at the beginning of the 2nd period that the Thunder looked like they would be able to make a game of it, but in reality, it just served as a wake up call for the Blazers to get out there and get after it, and they went on a run to close the first half that the Thunder never recovered from. The Blazers came out in the 2nd half and just obliterated the Thunder in all facets of the game. It really was embarrassing, in fact, if it wasn't for Livingston, I'd have probably shut the game off, and went to bed or something. Okay, so not really, but I wanted to throw a sledgehammer through my TV throughout most of the 2nd half.
That's enough for this crappy game recap. The Blazers kicked the crap out of us, and there isn't a whole lot more you need to know about. Goodnight folks, hopefully we play better on Sunday, because tonight was awful.