Uncharacteristic Night For Thunder Causes Fourth Loss To Warriors
By A. Suave Francisco
In the final regular season matchup against the Golden State Warriors, the Thunder once again fell short, losing 111-95. Kevin Durant is still recovering from a knee injury, so this game was circled on the Thunder's list as a very winnable competition but after an uncharacteristically bad rebounding and free-throw shooting night, OKC fell short once again.
As expected and especially after ESPN's Chris Haynes published a story voicing the Warriors disgust with the way OKC handled KD's return in February, this game was extremely heated. Semaj Christon and Steph Curry got into a shoving match in the final seconds of the second quarter while trying to get position on a tipoff. Russell Westbrook got into the shoving match while originally trying to break it up, then Draymond Green got into the mix as well, resulting in four total technical fouls called. The Thunder faithful hoped for a comeback following that sequence, but Curry inevitably cherry-picked down the court for a buzzer-beating three to end the first half, putting the Warriors in great command, up 59-39.
The second half wasn't any more gracious to the Thunder after the Warriors weathered a 13-5 Thunder run to start the half by making it all look minor as they expanded the lead to 27 at one point.
The story behind the poor offensive (and defensive) night for the Thunder was easily poor free throw shooting and lack of rebounding on the defensive end. OKC finished the game 17-of-31 from the free throw line and lost the rebounding battle 37-28, resulting in 11 second-chance points on the night.
Despite Thompson and Curry being in a rather significant shooting slump lately, the combined for 14-of-27 from three and 57 points. The Warriors as a team shot 45.5 percent from three and the Thunder shot just 19 percent.
Not only did Russell finish tonight's game with just 15 points, 7 assists and 8 rebounds, he also owned a team low -25 plus/minus statistic which is an obvious recipe for a Thunder loss, in addition to him not getting a triple-double.
“Just a combination of a lot of things, but it was just one of those nights. Shots didn’t fall. We had some over-shots that didn’t fall. They made shots, as well. A few mishaps defensively, but we’ll be alright. ”
A few good things to look at moving forward for the Thunder: They lost all four regular-season games last season to the Warriors, then beat them three times in the playoffs, so all is not lost for the Thunder in the slightest. OKC is currently trending in the right direction, getting more consistency out of key players and have been victorious in 5 of the last 6 games. Last but not least, the Thunder still remain just one game behind the Clippers for the fifth spot in the Western Conference with 12 games remaining and a relatively easy schedule compared to Los Angeles.
Wednesday night the Philadelphia 76ers will enter the Peake with hopes to slow down Westbrook and the Thunder for the second consecutive game. OKC will use Wednesday as an opportunity to rebound and release some anger against a non-playoff team after what happened in Monday night's game.