{"id":1875,"date":"2016-02-21T22:16:52","date_gmt":"2016-02-22T04:16:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fredsportsextra.com\/?p=1875"},"modified":"2017-07-08T16:02:02","modified_gmt":"2017-07-08T21:02:02","slug":"thunder-fans-do-you-need-to-worry-okc-title-hopes-running-on-fumes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fredsportsextra.com\/?p=1875","title":{"rendered":"Thunder fans, do you need to worry? OKC title hopes running on fumes"},"content":{"rendered":"
As most Oklahoma City Thunder fans didn’t like the final score today in the Chesapeake Arena, what can we take from this total domination by the Eastern Conference’s best Cleveland Cavs?<\/strong><\/span><\/h6>\n
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  1. \u00a0Recognize that the Thunder must play a 48 minute game to have a chance to win against a Cleveland team.\u00a0\u00a0Regardless of shooting percentages, the NBA is a league of effort, by every\u00a0player.\u00a0 Against inferior competition, teams\u00a0like Oklahoma City, Golden State, and the\u00a0Los Angeles Clippers, can win ugly,\u00a0not playing their best, including stretches of\u00a0the game where the effort is not totally grand.\u00a0 But in games between the best teams, a total effort has to be the norm, and today, as the Thunder went through their \u00a0game sets, the effort didn’t show up. That goes especially with Kevin Durant, as his hustle was lacking, especially in the third quarter as the Caves ran the Thunder out of their own gym.\u00a0 A perfect example was a turnover by KD, followed by his dejection of not getting a call, allowing the Cavs to run the floor and get an easy basket. KD’s lack of getting his ass back on defense was telling. On another play Russell Westbrook broke for a great drive, dunking hard, exciting the crowd.\u00a0 On the next trip down the floor the Cavs 2nd string point guard Matthew Dellavedova, the victim of Westbrook’s great play, made an easy drive to the basket as Westbrook was watching, and delivered an easy two.\u00a0 One great play followed by lack of defensive effort and you are back where you stared.\u00a0 That will not win championships when that\u00a0plays out over and over\u00a0during a game, season, career.<\/li>\n
  2. Oklahoma City is being marked by other elite teams\u00a0as a soft team.\u00a0 Enes Kanter hit the floor at least five times trying for offensive rebounds in the second half.\u00a0 You could look for a missed shot and after a block out of Kanter was on the floor looking up.\u00a0 In the first half the Cavs carved up the Thunder defense for easy baskets around the rim, on drives or uncontested layup from the set piece.\u00a0An example of dominating in setting their picks, running their offense, and doing whatever they please. J.R. Smith’s open\u00a0threes\u00a0the he knocked down were\u00a0results of a\u00a0hard pick set and\u00a0Dion Waiters not getting to\u00a0the shooter.\u00a0 Waiters played soft all game.\u00a0 Adams held his own in the first quarter, but\u00a0as the game wore on, the lobs for dunks were working for the Cavs didn’t work for Adams.\u00a0Serge Ibaka and Kanter are not playing winning basketball as their presence on the defensive end was not good.\u00a0 Ibaka has been turned into a shooting forward and not a rim protector and his\u00a0defense and rebounding has suffered.\u00a0 Soft is what I\u00a0call Serge.\u00a0 As what Indiana did earlier in the week, the Thunder bigs are being taken to the cleaners, especially on defense.\u00a0\u00a0The\u00a0Thunder are very limited inside\u00a0as Nick Collison is just a shell from what he had been a year or two ago. As for Mitch McGary, who knows. Coach Donavan seems to not like what he brings to the table.\u00a0 He is just drawing a paycheck.\u00a0 As for the new guy Randy Foye, I don’t expect much.\u00a0 Morrow, Waiters, Singler bring absolutely nothing to the table here.\u00a0 This has become a soft team.<\/li>\n
  3. Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook might be the only two Thunder that can actually make this team better.\u00a0 It is not a hidden fact that the two Thunder stars are elite, so elite, that you could without much of an argument, say they\u00a0are top five anywhere on the planet.\u00a0 Yet, for OKC to be the team that wins a title, the way they are playing this\u00a0year is\u00a0not going to even get close to seeing gold.\u00a0 Westbrook is the best player on the team in that he has the ability to get everyone involved in the offense. But as I have already mentioned, he is becoming a liability of defense because he takes possessions off.\u00a0 He can make the great steal but more often give up the easy two. As for Durant, he is playing some of his best overall ball in his career, and many times he scores without much effort. But for consistently, the two superstars can forget about the other three on the court, and there is a reason.\u00a0 Their supporting cast is not what GM Sam Presti thought it might be.\u00a0 As already mentioned, the Thunder have too many insignificantly mediocre\u00a0player and in the course of a game they become a chain of fatal strangulation for the team.\u00a0 The fact is that the Thunder are just not quality deep right now.<\/li>\n
  4. Coaching can be a deciding factor but right now Billy Donavan is still learning the pro game.\u00a0 You would think not.\u00a0 It does not take a lot to see some Thunder players that are just killing the team with their play.\u00a0 And to continue to play Dion Waiters while he screws up, misses shots and layups, and allows his man to light it up (Smith had 15 on him tonight while Waiters had 0 while Smith was playing him) is not working.\u00a0\u00a0 Reward terrible play by giving more minutes?\u00a0 No, this is not college. Get messy Billy, and get tossed from a game….your players will appreciate that.\u00a0 Show that Russell emotion as a coach.\u00a0\u00a0It is a fact that Donavan is a coach that will always lay blame on himself and not his players. That can be a downfall for this coach. We have a coach more like Scott\u00a0Brooks than we think.\u00a0 He cannot\u00a0tell Dion, you\u00a0smelled tonight.\u00a0 He\u00a0can’t tell\u00a0Russell, that effort on defense won’t cut it.\u00a0\u00a0That is the\u00a0difference from a winning coach\u00a0(Gregg Popovich) and a coach trying appease players.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
    \"19794827-mmmain\"<\/a>
    Photo Credit: AP<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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    <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    As most Oklahoma City Thunder fans didn’t like the final score today in the Chesapeake…<\/p>\n

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    <\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1879,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[447,285,330,546,58,547,53,54],"class_list":["post-1875","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nba","tag-billy-donavan","tag-cleveland-cavs","tag-dion-waiters","tag-gregg-popovich","tag-kevin-durant","tag-matthew-dellavedova","tag-oklahoma-city-thunder","tag-russell-westbrook"],"a3_pvc":{"activated":true,"total_views":220,"today_views":0},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fredsportsextra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1875","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fredsportsextra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fredsportsextra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fredsportsextra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fredsportsextra.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1875"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/fredsportsextra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1875\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1883,"href":"https:\/\/fredsportsextra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1875\/revisions\/1883"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fredsportsextra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fredsportsextra.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fredsportsextra.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fredsportsextra.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}