Thunder Views: Sadness, the NBA Apocalypse, and Eric Clapton?

Welp, the Thunder sure as hell didn’t look like a team coming off of three days rest, nor do they appear to be improving in any way, shape or form. One would think that the learning curve for this roster would be rather small, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

Spotlight

Any ball movement that was there in the early going had completely vanished by the third quarter, as there was no cohesion at all on offense for the Thunder. 14 assists in the first half turned to 3 assists in the final 24 minutes. Their shot selection was awful and they became reliant on offensive rebounding to keep them afloat. Not a great formula.

8-12 and heading back home to face Minnesota and San Antonio. Where do the Thunder go from here?

A majority of Thunder writers are with me when I say that I feel like I’ve been writing the same thing over and over for the last month. And that’s because I have been. This team is running into the same problems again and again. This repetition is nothing however compared to Billy Donovan’s through the first quarter of the season. He continuously reiterates getting his players to see the vision of ball movement out there on the court, but at what point does that need adjusting?

To be fair, he has adjusted rotations, as Terrance Ferguson was the first off the bench for the second game in a row last night, while Alex Abrines saw no rotation action. These changes don’t seem to be very effective or sensical, as the bench unit got torched in Orlando.

So where’s Donovan go from here? It’s an open ended question that can go in any direction. If you’re Donovan, what’s your next move? I’m curious to hear what the WTLC community has to say. Leave your thoughts below, or feel free to just vent in the comment section.

Quick Rumbles

You know that feeling when you’re sad or emotional, but you continue to play sad music just to fuel the fire? Yeah, that’s basically what I’m going to do here. Embrace the sadness (for now).

• The Magic were on a 9 game losing streak heading into last night’s game.
• OKC has now lost 3 straight games, and 7 straight on the road (2-9 overall).
• They are now 4 games below .500.
• OKC has not been over .500 since October after they defeated the Bucks (4-3).
• OKC had just 3 assists in the second half. Yes, you read that correctly.
• Here’s a big reason why. In the shooting zones closest to the rim, OKC shot an awful 23-53.

• The ball movement in the second half sucked.
• The shot selection in the second half sucked.
• Last night sucked.
• Russ had 37, but 20 of those came in the fourth when he was trying to shoot his way into “Magic Mode.”
• To make matters worse, this happened tonight:

I have to be honest, when I first saw this play, I felt like the basketball apocalypse was upon us. When Russ gets embarrassed like that, my mind immediately jumps to NBA -Y2K scenarios.

• I’ll just leave this here:

If you weren’t feeling down before, watching Russ sit there will definitely do the trick.

A Look Ahead

Minnesota and San Antonio up next. Perfect.

CUE THE MUSIC