By: Michael Doutey
The Oklahoma City Thunder fall to the Minnesota Timberwolves 104-88 Wednesday night in Minnesota. The Thunder looked really good this time a week ago in Los Angeles and have now reverted back to the bad basketball they played over the month of November. It is not acceptable the way this team has played over its last three games as they’ve been run out of the gym by Phoenix, Portland and now Minnesota. This is the type of basketball we all thought the Thunder have moved on from over the last month. The Thunder had another bad start and another bad third quarter and the Timberwolves took advantage. The Thunder now have lost the season series to the Timberwolves and OKC has fallen to 22-20 on the season and are sitting in seventh place in the Western Conference standings. Here are tonight’s five observations from another poor performance from the Thunder.
1. Who Wants to Help Russ?
Russell Westbrook didn’t play a perfect game tonight. But he was really, really good. He scored 38 points on a really efficient 15-23 shooting from the floor and he was 1-2 from three. He also grabbed 10 rebounds, had five assists, four steals and did have four turnovers. As good as Russ was tonight, he had zero help from anyone else. He tried to get Steven Adams going early and Adams missed shots near the rim. Carmelo Anthony was bad tonight as he shot 5-19 for 15 points and also went 2-8 from three. He got lots of clean looks and missed them while he was a turnstyle on defense. Paul George was also really bad, but we’ll get to him in a second. The Thunder’s bench was really bad, too. OKC’s second unit mustered 11 points total tonight. That isn’t going to get it done. Someone has to help Russ out and tonight it looked like no one was interested in assisting him against the Timberwolves.
2. Where is Paul George?
There was lots of fanfare surrounding PG in LA last week. Remember when he was hugging is parents courtside as he was draining shots on the Lakers and Clippers? Well, maybe he stayed behind in LA because the guy who is sporting the #13 in Thunder blue since those games has been really off. He has been bad especially on defense. He doesn’t seem as engaged and his effort seems to have dipped in these last three games. He was ball watching on defense in Phoenix. The last two games he has allowed his man to be able to penetrate past him. He doesn’t seem ready to come out and play. OKC needs him to score alongside Russ but he was way off tonight. He scored 13 points on 5-14 shooting and he only shot two three throws all night. He wasn’t very aggressive on offense and I really felt he was bad defensively, which is odd given how much the Thunder are missing Andre Roberson’s defense. But PG has to be better if this team is going to have any chance at turning things around.
3. 13 assists
The Thunder had a season low in assists tonight. The Thunder mustered just 13 assists in this game. I feel like we are back in time where the Thunder are constantly missing shots that are wide open. PG had wide open looks that didn’t go down. Melo had tons of shots that were wide open looks that weren’t even close. Heck, even Steven Adams couldn’t get anything to fall. That was the biggest reason why the assist numbers were down. You have to make shots when you’re wide open. Adams, Melo and PG didn’t do that tonight.
4. Thunder Bench Issues
The Thunder has to find something that works with this bench. Outside of Raymond Felton, no one has played well. Kyle Singler is unplayable along with Dakari Johnson. Alex Abrines has apparently forgotten how to play basketball. Josh Huestis is an energy and defensive guy. Jerami Grant is struggling to make anything other than a dunk. Patrick Patterson looks uncomfortable with how he is being used. I feel like Sam Presti and his crew are working the phones to see if they can somehow help this second unit out as the trade deadline is less than a month away.
5. Andre Roberson is the MVP, right?
The Thunder are apparently incapable of playing defense well without Dre. So he has to be one of the most important players in the NBA, right? I am embellishing here, but OKC is really struggling to defend without Dre. The Thunder are allowing 110.6 points without Dre in the lineup over the last six games. It is insane how the Thunder can’t defend without Dre. It reminds me of a few seasons ago when Serge Ibaka was the same way. Dre is the guy who is the bandaid to this Thunder teams defense. OKC has really bad habits defensively, largely in part to Westbrook and Melo. But Dre has been good enough to mask all of those issues. He is that good. He has been willing to do all the dirty work, which appears to be beneath what some players are willing to do. OKC needs Dre back, but him coming back won’t fix all of the issues this Thunder team has.
The Thunder will be back in action on Saturday afternoon in Charlotte to take on the Hornets. Tip time is set for 4 p.m. inside the Spectrum Arena.
