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Blogtable: Are The Thunder Cooked?

May 1, 2013  ·  11:05AM




Each week, we’ll ask our stable of scribes to weigh in on the three most important NBA topics of the day — and then give you a chance to step on the scale, too, in the comments below.

Week 27: Thunder’s chances | Will Lakers contend next season? | Boston relevancy

The Thunder without Russell Westbrook: Is OKC’s chance at a title done?

Steve Aschburner: I didn’t think they could get past Miami regardless, but yes, this clinches it. The potential for breakout offensive mayhem that Westbrook always has embodied is just one reason. The energy dip of Oklahoma City overall without him on the floor is another. But I see a third one — the Heat or whomever OKC plays going forward in the West bracket won’t have to work as hard defensively, conserving more energy themselves for their own attacks. Meanwhile, defenses can load up on Kevin Durant as never before. Oh, and I haven’t even mentioned the absence of James Harden this postseason (well, till now).

Fran Blinebury: Westbrook’s loss doesn’t mean the Thunder’s chances are completely wiped out. But it does make the margin for error as narrow as the edge of a razor.  With Kevin Durant playing at his max level, they still need guys like Serge Ibaka, Thabo Sefolosha, Reggie Jackson and Derek Fisher to have very, very good nights. They were always going to be underdogs to Miami if they got to The Finals. Now, I don’t believe they can get there.

Jeff Caplan: There will be no parade in Oklahoma City come June. Not that OKC was getting past Miami anyway, but they were my pick to at least get back to the NBA Finals. Russell Westbrook just brings more intensity to both ends than can be sufficiently replaced by the current roster. We’ve seen the offense completely stagnate at times in two games at Houston, and the Thunder will see much better better defenses than the Rockets.

Russell Westbrook (by Layne Murdoch/NBAE)

Russell Westbrook (by Layne Murdoch/NBAE)

John Schuhmann: Yes. Right now, the Thunder are playing a team that ranked 16th defensively, and they’ve still scored at a pretty efficient rate in the last two games. But they will likely be facing a top-3 defensive team either in the next round (Memphis) or in the conference finals (San Antonio). And it’s when you face a great defensive team in the playoffs that you really miss your second scorer (just ask the Knicks). Those teams will take away your first option and make you beat them with secondary scorers and secondary plays. The Thunder will also miss those easy transition buckets that Westbrook gets. Of course, they never had much of a chance against the Heat (who have beat them six straight times) anyway.

Sekou Smith: They were not my pick to win a title with a healthy Westbrook, so there was nothing to kill, so to speak. It’s hard to imagine the Thunder running through the gauntlet that is the Western Conference playoff race and then facing off with the Miami Heat (or whoever comes out of the East) and winning it all without Westbrook. They couldn’t get past the Heat with Kevin Durant, Westbrook and James Harden last year. This notion that Durant will be able to get back to that point and beyond this season without the other two seems a bit far-fetched to me. That’s too much heavy lifting for a lone superstar in this day and age.

Lang Whitaker: To channel Lloyd Christmas, So you’re telling me there’s a chance? Sure the Thunder have a chance to return to The Finals without Russell Westbrook, but there’s obviously a much slimmer margin of error. And as awesome as Kevin Durant can be, when defenses load up and send everyone after him, at some point guys like Reggie Jackson and Derek Fisher are going to have to start knocking down the mid- and long-range jumpers they were missing against Houston in Game 4.

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Ball In Durant’s Hands, Fate In Others

April 30, 2013  ·  3:15PM

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Twelve seconds left in the game and the only way for Francisco Garcia to have gotten any closer to Kevin Durant’s jersey would have been to wear it with him.

This is life now, as far as it goes without Russell Westbrook, for as long as the Thunder can keep going in the playoffs.

OKC has always been a team looking for Durant as the ultimate bailout guy in the final seconds of a game. Trouble is, now the Thunder pretty much need him to be loading, pulling and driving their wagon from opening tip to the final horn.

Yes, Durant got a luxurious six minutes of rest in Game 4 on Monday night, but he still had to make 12 of 16 shots, score 38 points, grab eight rebounds and deal six assists just to give his team an opportunity to flub the final possession.

Without Westbrook on the court, there is nobody else to simply step in and step up and make the plays at both ends of the floor that can change the tide and halt momentum. He couldn’t be a game-changer on defense when the Rockets were scoring 38 points in the third quarter and he couldn’t be the difference maker when OKC was scoring only 19 points in the fourth.

There are no more “Gipper Games” left in OKC’s locker room as it tries to rally round its fallen buddy. Now the Thunder have to live with the reality of being without their unpredictable lightning bolt if they are going to follow through on those plans to get back to the NBA Finals.

“It was a different feeling, for sure,” backup forward Nick Collison said. “I think for us, we have to be able to get over that. Russ is not going to be with us in the playoffs. It can’t always be this emotional ‘Win one for Russell’ for us because it’s too much an emotional roller coaster.

“I think for us we have to focus on what we’re doing on the court, getting ready to play and take a business-like approach to these games. Still have the emotion you need for a playoff game, but really focus on what we need to do on the floor.”

Quite simply, the margin for error to make a serious reach for the Larry O’Brien Trophy is the kind usually familiar to only the bomb squad and the Wallenda Family.

The Game 4 score when the Thunder lineup was on the floor was 31-14 in favor of Houston. The rest of the combinations beat the Rockets 89-74.

A couple of questions: How many times can OKC get away with such insignificant production from the starters? Can the reserves deliver consistently enough to tip-toe through the minefield of four full playoff rounds?

As splendid as he is and as many clouds as Durant may be able to scrape with his soaring talent level, it’s going to take much more Serge Ibaka (eight points), Kendrick Perkins (zero), Thabo Sefolosha (five) and Collison (three) to keep rowing the Thunder ship through the deeper waters. The Rockets are young and athletic and play with the abandon of a shirts-and-skins game on the playground, but they are no real threat to beat the Thunder in a seven-game series. That will come when they have to body up against the bruising Grizzlies or lobbing Clippers in the next round or the much deeper Spurs in the Western Conference finals, if they make it that far.

If the Thunder are going to stay afloat, they have to do it with the unlikely combination of the second-year man Reggie Jackson and 38-year-old veteran Derek Fisher manning the point. Jackson score 18 points before seeming to run out of gas at the end, while Fisher kept advancing the AARP cause by knocking down four 3-pointers.

While playing the point-forward position may give Durant a better view of where he can create his own scoring chances, the Thunder can’t let it come at the expense of not producing enough offense of their own.

Durant is young and willing with the legs and spirit that are capable to play virtually from start to finish every time out from here to June, if that’s what it takes. Nobody doubts that he can deliver individually. But in the end, how he can take them is not in his hands.

Series hub: Thunder vs. Rockets

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Just A Start To The Thunder’s Challenge

April 28, 2013  ·  10:12AM

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HOUSTON – It was 44 years ago when Don Nelson’s foul-line jumper kicked improbably high off the back of the rim, fell right down through the net and kept all of those celebration balloons trapped up there at the ceiling in the Forum.

That was an ending.

Nelson’s shot gave the Celtics the two-point margin they needed in Game 7 of the NBA Finals for another championship over the Lakers.

Kevin Durant’s shot with 41.9 seconds left on the clock took Nelson’s little tap dance on the rim and turned it into an entire chorus production. The first bounce kicked so high off the back of the rim that it cleared the top of the backboard, then teasingly hit the front rim and then the back rim two more times before sliding down into the basket, a Tibetan prayer wheel offering that was answered immediately.

This was just a beginning.

Before the Thunder get to jubilantly race off a court somewhere to celebrate a championship, there will likely have to be many more nights like this, where they sizzle and fizzle, where they thrive and survive, where they just grind on.

It was the first time in five years — and 440 games — that Durant ran out onto a basketball court wearing an Oklahoma City jersey without running mate and buddy Russell Westbrook at his side.

The lightning rod point guard was back at home watching on TV after having undergone surgery Saturday to repair a torn lateral meniscus in his right knee. That means the road to the top of the mountain just got far bumpier and more treacherous.

“It feels the same,” Durant said. “I just go out there on the court, and I knew I had to give it my all no matter what. That’s what I’m going to do for however many games we have to play…I’m going to give it my all no matter what and not worry about missed shot, turnovers or anything.”

But Durant knows that the margin for error just got slimmer than a supermodel’s waist. No more nights when Westbrook and all of his inherent idiosyncrasies and flaws will be able to bail out the Thunder with his bodacious talent and his sheer audacity.

Now there will be far more nights like this one where wilo-’o-the-wisp Durant has to go the virtual distance, getting all of 44 seconds to rest on the bench while putting up 30 shots to equal his career playoff high of 41 points.

Now there will be more nights when the Thunder will have to rely on the combo of second-year Reggie Jackson and 17th year Derek Fisher to hold down Westbrook’s position at the point.

Now there will be more nights when Serge Ibaka has to be the leaping, dominating monster at both ends of the floor with 17 points, 11 rebounds, two official blocked shots and about a dozen more altered.

The Thunder built a 26-point lead early in the third quarter and had to hold on to the final tick of the clock because they’re now missing one of the legs they usually stand on.

“It definitely was an emotional time the last 48 hours,” said Thunder coach Scott Brooks. “We all love what Russell is about. The guy has probably the biggest heart I’ve ever been around. He’s done a great job of putting us in this position.”

But now the season-ending injury puts the Thunder in the position of having to, if not reinvent themselves on the fly, at least make a major adjustment.  So here they are against an inexperienced No. 8 seed in Houston — the youngest team in the NBA this season — getting burns on the palms of their hands as the rope slips through.

If it wasn’t a case of being physically spent, then OKC had to be mentally exhausted from battling all night to fill in the gaps. Brooks had said before the game that it’s just a matter of getting everybody to do “a little bit.”

However, in playoff games that little bit can become a quite heavy lift.

There were the Rockets, playing with few expectations and not much to lose, roaring back. Here was picking up a loose ball that Kevin Martin seemed to lose as the shot-clock ran down and Ibaka flicking it up over his head and off the glass with 1:25 left in the game. Here was the untested-in-the-playoffs Jackson, standing at the foul line and draining two nervy free throws with eight seconds remaining and then leaping up and latching onto the final rebound of the game when Carlos Delfino’s 3-pointer missed just ahead of the horn.

“We learned Russell was going to be out at practice (Friday),” said forward Nick Collison, “but eventually we have to get over it. You have to be able to move on and play. We’re basketball players and we’re in the playoffs and we have to get ourselves ready to play.

“Our problems were more execution and a lot of that has to do with playing without Russell because we rely on him for a lot on the court.”

It took the Rockets missing numerous opportunities down the stretch — open shots that clanked off the rim and turnovers that were fatal – for the Thunder to escape.

For a team that entered the playoffs with its sights set strictly on playing all the way into June and getting back to The Finals, now each game, every day, each ensuing round will be a challenge.

They will need to learn to get by without the nonpareil talents of Westbrook to pull them out of the fire, get things done with pure execution or enough similar fortuitous bounces as Durant’s improbable 3-pointer, a tantalizing dance-of-the-seven-veils shot that pulled them back from the brink of what could have been a crushing defeat, giving birth to recrimination and doubt.

“The Lord was with us,” he said. “That’s all I was thinking. I knew as soon as that shot hit the back rim, I was thinking, ‘Not again. Tough 3 shot. Maybe I should have drove. Maybe I should have got a foul.’ But it was able to bounce in and all because of the good Lord. I really can’t say too much else about that. I’m glad we made it.”

A happy ending for now. But really just the start of a grind.

– Series Hub: Thunder vs. Rockets

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West Is Wide Open Without Westbrook

April 26, 2013  ·  6:46PM






HANG TIME HEADQUARTERS – Forget about The Finals, for now.

The Oklahoma City Thunder have to worry about getting out of the first round of the Western Conference playoffs, now that we know they’ll have to finish the Houston Rockets without one half of their superstar dynamic duo. Russell Westbrook needs surgery to repair cartilage in his right knee and could be out anywhere from four to six weeks, depending on how quickly he recovers.

The news hits the Thunder hard. They entered the playoffs as the Western Conference No. 1 seed and now, just two games in, they lead the Rockets 2-0 heading into Saturday night’s crucial Game 3 (9:30 p.m. ET, ESPN) at the Toyota Center., they are forced to ponder the possibility of playing for the remainder of the postseason without one of the 10 best players in basketball.

“We hope [he comes back in the playoffs],” Kevin Durant said. “Our firs thing is to make sure he gets healthy and gets that knee back right. We’re not trying to rush him or bring him back ahead of schedule. We want to make sure he’s healthy and his knee is right. That’s our only concern right now.”

There is a time frame that would allow Westbrook to return later in the playoffs, perhaps late in the conference finals or the start of The Finals.

But again, the Thunder will have to make it that far without the league’s resident iron man. Love him or hate him, no one can question Westbrook’s durability, before now. He hadn’t missed a game during his five-year career, having played in 394 consecutive regular season games and all 45 playoff games the Thunder have played during that same span.

But he won’t be on the floor for Saturday night, joining a long list of game changers who are watching this NBA postseason from the bench of or beyond due to injury. Kobe Bryant, Derrick Rose, Rajon Rondo, Amar’e Stoudemire, David Lee and Danny Granger are all watching their teams toil without them in this postseason. They all serve as human reminders for their peers that your next false step could be your last, of this season.

But none of those aforementioned stars plays on a team that had the supposed inside tack to get back to the conference finals and then The Finals, for that rematch with the Miami Heat. Westbrook’s injury opens the door in the Western Conference for the San Antonio Spurs, Los Angeles Clippers or Memphis Grizzlies and the Denver Nuggets or Golden State Warriors to start eyeballing the calendar in early June for a possible trip to The Finals of their own. Shoot, even the Los Angeles Lakers, down 2-0 to the Spurs in their first round series, can start dreaming about doing the unthinkable.

Simply put, the West is wide open now.

“Kevin Durant needs to take the Carmelo Anthony approach,” said ESPN analyst Jalen Rose. “Take around 25-30 shots per game, his team already has a 2-0 lead. The one thing about professional sports, and life for that matter, when opportunity knocks, you have to seize it. So trust me, all of the teams in the Western Conference, their ears perked up today. They feel like they have chance to advance.”

The Thunder earned the No. 1 seed in the West this season but entered the postseason with plenty of worthy challengers who did not plan on the fragile nature of things to swing in their favor with Westbrook’s injury. No offense to Reggie Jackson, Kevin Martin, Derek Fisher or anyone else in a Thunder uniform, but it’s Durant and Russell Westbrook who do the headlining. In fact, the Thunder have never had to work for an extended period of time without both of their stars in the lineup.

Trying to navigate these rough playoff waters with only one half of that devastating combination sounds more like mission impossible for a Thunder team that, truth be told, spent much of this season learning how to operate without the former third member of their superstar crew, Rockets All-Star guard James Harden.

Thunder GM Sam Presti, coach Scott Brooks and Durant all did their part to rally the troops today after the news spread of the severity of Westbrook’s injury.

“Our team as a whole, we’ve got a resilient group of guys, a lot of character within that locker room and a group that enjoys playing together and has been through some adversities over the last several years that they’ve been together.” Presti said. “We’d expect them to adjust, come together and have different guys step in and play well collectively. Once we were able to gather all of the necessary information and everything was accumulated, it was an easy decision for our medical team.”

The decision on how to play in Westbrook’s absence won’t be nearly as easy. The Rockets’ defensive strategy shifts now from worrying about picking between two lethal performers to focusing solely on Durant and daring that Thunder supporting cast to beat them. Westbrook averaged 24 points and seven assists through those first two games while also serving, as always, as the Thunder’s primary facilitator.

Jackson’s been solid in spurts of relief this season. Doing it daily, however, could be more than he’s capable of handling. And even if does acquit himself well in the first round, either Chris Paul or Mike Conley and their teams, will be waiting on the Thunder’s replacement for Westbrook in the next round.

Durant insists that the Thunder’s “Next Man Step Up” mantra applies in this case, just as it does any other.

“We have good depth on our team,” Durant said. “Reggie Jackson is ready for the moment. He has been working his tail off ever since he got here. So he’s ready for this. We just have to rally behind him and know that we have to give him confidence, because he’s going to make mistakes like everybody else. But we just have to keep encouraging him.”

All the courage and encouragement in the world won’t make Jackson into Westbrook. Their is certainly survival after losing a superstar. The Lakers (Kobe) and Celtics (Rondo) are proof of that much.

But we’re talking about a team focused on competing for championships, not just surviving.

“It doesn’t matter who we throw out there. We’re a 15-man team and we still are, even with Russell being hurt,” Brooks said. “We’re a 15-man team and everybody believes in each other and that’s what you have to do. You don’t win in this league with one player. You don’t win with five or six players, you win it with your team. We talk about that and we believe in the things that we talk about. We don’t jus throw it out because it looks cool on a t-shirt or a billboard. We believe in each other, we believe in what we do and we take pride in it and we’re proud about what we do.”

We’re all going to find out exactly what the Thunder do when they are forced to play a man down.

Forget about The Finals … for now!

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Thunder Need To Be Wary Of No. 1

April 15, 2013  ·  12:56PM



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HANG TIME HEADQUARTERS – Kevin Durant has all but handed Carmelo Anthony the scoring title this season to chase a bigger, more team-oriented goal.

Durant wants that No. 1 seed in the Western Conference playoff chase and he wants the road to The Finals to run directly through Oklahoma City this year. He could have those goals wrapped up this evening if the Thunder can handle the Sacramento Kings (8 ET, League Pass).

I understand the need for a team, particularly one led by young superstars, to achieve certain things. That top overall seed is a status symbol, an indicator that the Thunder organization is interested in being dominant in every facet of their operation.

But that top spot also comes with a few thorns this season, namely a potential first-round date with the one team that could prove to be the biggest wildcard in the playoff field.

Should L.A. hang on to their ever-so-slim lead on Utah for the No. 8 spot, they’ll get a date with OKC (provided the Thunder can topple the Kings and Bucks) in the opening round. The Thunder have no reason to fear the Los Angeles Lakers or the Utah Jazz … none at all.

That doesn’t mean they don’t have to be wary of what an unpredictable Lakers team without Kobe Bryant looks like in a playoff setting. There are things the Lakers do without Bryant (move the ball more freely, work deeper into the shot clock and play through Dwight Howard and Pau Gasol inside and then out) that no one in the league has had much time to prepare for.

A dangerous Lakers team battled a hobbled San Antonio Spurs team, the same Spurs we’ll see this weekend, and won an emotionally charged game to move one step closer to locking up that No. 8 seed.

If the Lakers can keep up the same sort of intensity for another week and a half, that first-round matchup in the playoffs will be considerably more difficult than it might have with Bryant in the mix and the rest of his teammates taking their usual backseat.

The Thunder have every reason to be confident, if they do indeed match up with the Lakers in this weekend. They still have decided advantage on the perimeter with Durant and Russell Westbrook leading the charge. And Serge Ibaka and Kendrick Perkins are more than capable of dealing with Howard and Gasol inside.

Every step of the process that any team is supposed to take to become a championship team the Thunder have gone through it, one painstaking step at a time. Remember, it was a Bryant and Gasol-led Lakers crew that dispatched a youthful OKC crew in the 2010 playoffs that was the postseason debut of Durant, Westbrook and Co.

OKC has yet to enter the playoffs with the pressure that comes along with that No. 1 seed. In order to achieve their ultimate goal, they’d have to carry that extra weight from wire to wire in the postseason.

That hasn’t been done by a team in either conference since the Boston Celtics did it five years ago. That Celtics team, with the way it was put together, was hardened by a season-long grind that carried them through both the regular season and playoffs.

There were veterans like Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and Ray Allen, and of course, coach Doc Rivers, around to help guide youngsters like Rajon Rondo and Perkins through that journey. Those Celtics faced their own wild card in the first round of the 2008 playoffs in the Atlanta Hawks. And they needed seven games and everything that home court advantage brings to get through that series, the first of two seven-game series (and the only ones of that postseason, mind you) that Boston had to endure.

On paper, the Celtics had nothing to worry about with the Hawks. They were the superior team in every way. The Hawks backed into the playoffs that year with a sub-.500 record, something the Lakers won’t have to do this season. Boston got past a solid LeBron James-led Cavs team in the East semifinals in the next round, too, with the help of home court. But it was another opponent waiting to test the mettle of the conference’s No. 1 seed.

And that’s why the Thunder need to study the recent history of No. 1 seeds and be mindful of the responsibility that comes along with No. 1.

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Is There Skepticism Despite OKC’s Monster Season?

April 5, 2013  ·  7:11PM

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OKLAHOMA CITY – So just how good are the Oklahoma City Thunder and will it be good enough?

By the numbers, OKC is producing a season for the ages. Yet there seems to be doubt as to whether the superstar duo of Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook, minus third amigo James Harden, can get out of the West, let alone beat the Heat. Charles Barkley, for one, has already buried the Thunder in a potential Finals rematch.

There have been suggestions that the Thunder have long grown bored with the regular season, antsy to start the only season that really matters now for a franchise that’s all grown up. Others have claimed that individual selfishness has seeped into the team concept.

The Thunder, of course, aren’t buying it.

“Of course we all want the opportunity to go back and try to fight again for a championship,” Durant said. “After losing last year we wanted to get back as quick as possible. But we know throughout the year it’s a process and we want to get better each and every game. We’re going to have some games where, of course, we’re going to slip up and we’re going to have some bad games, but that’s all part of the journey. The time is almost here so we’ve got to be ready.”

Let’s start with what truly has been a jaw-dropping season for OKC yet is lost amid Miami’s 27-game winning streak and LeBron James‘ MVP brilliance.

At 55-20 after Thursday’s 100-88 win over the San Antonio Spurs, the Thunder have the inside track to the No. 1 seed in the Western Conference. With five wins in their final seven games (starting tonight at Indiana, 8 p.m. ET, League Pass) they can reach 60 for the first time since 1997-98 as the Seattle SuperSonics.

And they’re amassing those wins with incredible efficiency, tied for the league lead in scoring (106.0 ppg) while ranking second in field-goal percentage defense (42.5). Their plus-9.2 point-differential dwarfs Miami’s 7.7 while playing in the tougher conference, and it stands to be the largest point-differential since the 2007-08 champion Boston Celtics posted a plus-10.2.

In that season, the Sonics were making their swan song and opened 3-29. They finished 20-62. Every season since in OKC, the Thunder have increased their winning percentage. Currently at .733, they’re riding a better clip than last season’s .712 mark, and assuming they finish the season with a .700 or better winning percentage, they’ll join the Celtics teams from 1955-60 as the only teams to increase their winning percentage for five consecutive seasons while maintaining a .700 or better winning percentage in two of those seasons.

Then there’s the individual dominance of Durant, who is considered a distant second to James in the MVP race. If Durant can hold off Carmelo Anthony‘s late charge (and they meet at OKC on Sunday afternoon), he will win his fourth consecutive scoring title. He’s still on pace to become the sixth player in NBA history to shoot 50 percent from the field, 40 percent from 3-point range and 90 percent from the free throw line. No player has ever done both in the same season.

On top of that, Westbrook is compiling his best all-around season. Thabo Sefolosha and Serge Ibaka are posting their best offensive seasons, and new sixth man Kevin Martin, despite some lulls, is averaging 14.0 ppg and shooting a career-best 41.9 percent from beyond the arc.

Sounds like they might be better than last season.

“I’m not going to evaluate and say whether they’re as good, better or worse [than last season] or anything like that,” Spurs coach Gregg Popovich said. “They’re a championship-caliber team and they’re capable of winning the championship. And that’s what’s important.”

So why is there at least some apprehension to declare the Thunder the outright favorite to defend their West crown? A lot has to do with their surprising record against the other top teams in the West. The Nuggets, suddenly hit hard by injuries to Ty Lawson and Danilo Gallinari, took three of four from OKC. Memphis won two of three, including 90-89 Monday night.

And Thursday night a Spurs team that was without Manu Ginobili and Stephen Jackson, plus a gimpy Tony Parker who was finally shut down in the fourth quarter with two points due to a leg injury, trailed just 87-84 with five minutes to play after rallying from three separate double-digit deficits. OKC held on to tie the series, 2-2.

The Lakers, a very real possibility for an intriguing first-round showdown, nearly pulled off a similar comeback one month ago that would have given them the season series, 2-1. The Heat won both regular-season matchups including a wire-to-wire stomping on OKC’s home floor in February. Thursday’s win against San Antonio was OKC’s first against a current West playoff team in four tries, and they’re 4-5 in their last nine against West playoff clubs.

When OKC is at its best, playing at a frenetic pace, swarming defensively and running the floor, it seems impossible for a team like the Spurs with three high-mileage stars — two of which aren’t currently healthy — surrounded by young, talented role players, to keep up in a seven-game series. They didn’t last season, losing four straight after taking a 2-0 lead at home in the West finals. Without homecourt advantage, the Spurs’ chances would seem even more bleak.

Injuries to their two leading scorers have likely made the Nuggets, convincing winners at OKC two weeks ago, vulnerable. The Clippers have looked incoherent in recent weeks. Rugged Memphis? As good a shot as anybody.

“We’re in a good spot,” Westbrook said. “There’s always room for improvement, but we’re in a good position.”

Only the playoffs will tell us if good is good enough.

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Uncertainty Of New Parker Injury Hangs Over Spurs

April 5, 2013  ·  2:02AM

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OKLAHOMA CITY – The San Antonio Spurs lost their grip on the West’s top seed Thursday night and potentially much more.

All-Star point guard Tony Parker couldn’t continue in the Spurs’ 100-88 loss to the Thunder due to an unspecified injury to his leg. Limping on his left leg in the locker room, Parker, playing well since recently coming back from a sprained left ankle, wouldn’t expound on this new injury, although a solemn coach Gregg Popovich seemed to be bracing for the worst.

“I’m really concerned about Tony right now after seeing his situation tonight where he just had to stop,” Popovich said. “My feeling is tendinitis, something in his shins or whatever, from the way it looked on the court. But I don’t know.

“I got to see what’s going on. I got to see what the deal is. We thought he had just kind of recovered from his ankle, so this was something new tonight with his leg. I just don’t know what it is right now.”

Popovich yanked the sluggish Parker for good after he noticed him limping through a two-plus-minute stint early in the fourth quarter, leaving crunch-time duty to rookie Nando De Colo. Parker played 26 total minutes, just 10 in the second half, and finished 1-for-6 from the floor for a season-low two points that snapped a 56-game streak of scoring in double figures.

Thursday’s game was just his seventh back from the sprained ankle and he’s been playing through the remnants of a bone bruise in the ankle among other nagging injuries. He scored 25 points with five assists Monday night at Memphis and sat out Wednesday’s game against Orlando, listed on the injury report with a sore left ankle.

“I just have to get healthy,” Parker said. “I’m not going to talk about all my stuff. I’ve got a lot of stuff going on. I just have to get healthy. OKC, give them a lot of credit. They just beat us tonight.” (more…)

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OKC Needs To Get Martin Scoring Again

March 18, 2013  ·  1:51AM

DALLAS – Few teams can survive a game, let alone amass 107 points, when three players score in double figures and two combine for nearly two-thirds of their total points.

But no other team has Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook, and that makes the Oklahoma City Thunder as unique as they are incredibly difficult to defeat. The Dallas Mavericks realized this Sunday night for a fourth time this season and a third time in late-game, heartbreak fashion, 107-101.

Durant and Westbrook totaled 66 points with Westbrook going for 31 of his 35 through three quarters and Durant elevating an off-night with 19 of his 31 in the fourth quarter. Serge Ibaka plowed Dallas for 18 points and 16 rebounds.

No one else scored more than nine points which brings up the issue of sixth man Kevin Martin. He had the nine points on 4-for-9 shooting but just 1-for-4 from 3-point range, and it has to raise some concern that single-digit games are coming with increased frequency. Of his 15 single-digit games among 65 he’s played this season, Sunday’s was his sixth in the last 16 games, and OKC has won just two of the six with this one easily capable of swaying the other way.

Martin had the incredible good fortune to join the Thunder juggernaut just days before the season started in the stunning trade that sent former third amigo James Harden to the Houston Rockets. Martin says he loves the sixth-man role after being a career starter on poor teams and the effect the decreased minutes per game have had on his body. He said he wants to re-sign when he becomes a free agent this summer.

Yet Martin is well aware that he’ll be served up as the designated whipping post if OKC fails to defend its Western Conference crown, a delicate fact that Martin says means little to him.

“I don’t feel any pressure,” Martin said in an interview with NBA.com prior to playing the Lakers on March 5. “I’m comfortable in my own skin and with what I’ve done in my eight years as a professional basketball player.”

The Thunder and Martin got off to such a seamless start to the season that Harden quickly became an afterthought in Loud City as the Beard instantly became an All-Star in Clutch City. Now with the regular season winding down and the final judgment on OKC and Martin getting set to ratchet up, the sharpshooter is struggling to find a consistent shooting groove, and the Thunder’s wins and losses seem to mirror his ebbs and flows.

In the games Martin has scored fewer than 10 points, the Thunder are 7-8. They’re 42-8 otherwise.

Obviously, other factors also account for the final ledger in those games, but since the Jan. 27 loss at the Lakers when Martin scored nine points — he shot 4-for-8 from the field, but missed his two 3-point attempts — OKC is 1-5 against current playoff teams plus ninth-place Utah when Martin doesn’t reach double digits. The lone win came against Chicago, while San Antonio, Denver, Miami, Utah and the Lakers beat the Thunder by an average margin of 9.6 points. All but the Miami game came on the road.

It begs the question whether OKC can survive three rounds in the West if Martin is not a consistent scoring threat, especially from beyond the arc? During this 2-5 spell when Martin scores in single figures, he is 6-for-20 from 3-point range (30 percent), well below his excellent 42.5 percent on the season. In the 15 games (10 against playoffs teams plus Utah in which OKC is 3-7) he’s just 11-for-56 (19.6 percent).

Harden scored his points in a variety of ways. He’s an excellent ball-handler who often initiated the Thunder offense, including in the fourth quarter and crunch time. He can bury the 3 and is a premier penetrator, who this season leads the league in free throw attempts. Martin, averaging 14.3 points, is a pure shooter. He gets his points off catch-and-shoot 3s and on cuts to the basket.

Publicly, Martin’s teammates and coach Scott Brooks have his back. It’s difficult to say if internally there is concern. But, Sunday’s escape from Dallas — the West’s 10th place team had it tied 101-101 with 1:20 to play — served as another example. Martin had seven points in the first half and two in the second that came on a fourth-quarter layup off a Dallas turnover. On the next possession, he badly missed a corner 3 that led to Dallas taking the lead. It was Martin’s lone 3-point attempt of the second half.

“We know Kevin’s going to come through when he needs to,” Durant said. “There’s some shots he’s just missing, wide-open shots he’s just missing that he normally makes. It’s a different role for him. It’s tough to get a rhythm when you’re playing the sixth man and then most of the time you’re on the court with Russell and me. So we’ve just got to find a way to get him going, and we know he’s going to stick with it. Once he gets in the game we’ve just got find him and make sure we get him a good rhythm going.”

Durant makes a salient point. Martin played the final 3:46 of the third quarter, subbing in for Durant. Westbrook and Ibaka were both hot and they took five shots in the final six possessions. Martin didn’t get a look. He played the first 8:37 of the fourth quarter when Durant took over with remarkable isolation play that netted him 15 points in the opening 7:27. Brooks ultimately made the right call lifting Martin. His replacement, Thabo Sefolosha, hit the contested, crunch-time fadeaway with 12.5 seconds left to put OKC ahead 105-101.

It’s a difficult way to strike a rhythm.

“That’s what I’ve had to be most of this year, being a third scorer here,” Martin said in that interview a couple weeks ago. “Some nights there are a lot of opportunities, some nights they’re not. You just have to make the best out of those opportunities.”

After Sunday’s game, Martin, who played 24 minutes, four more than he garnered three games ago in the loss at San Antonio, was quick to dress and exit the locker room. Perhaps he just wanted a good seat on the team bus.

Perhaps it’s nothing to worry about on a team that boasts a double-barreled scoring machine with Durant and Westbrook and has led the league in scoring for most of the season. But in March, Martin’s scoring average has dipped to 11.1 points and his shooting percentages are down to 43.2 from the floor and 36.3 from 3s.

And in those last five losses to playoff teams (plus Utah), the Thunder have averaged 97.2 points, nearly 10 points off their season average.

“We want everybody to be on their game going into the playoffs,” Brooks said. “He’s had maybe eight to 10 games or maybe even less than that where he hasn’t shot the ball well, but I think every player will go through that. And hopefully he’s getting out of that the last few games. But he’s a big part of what we do.”

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Shaqtin’ A Fool: Vol 2., Episode 18

March 8, 2013  ·  3:02AM


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It’s a Shaqtin’ A Fool double-header this week. On Tuesday, Shaq crowned his main man JaVale McGee with top honors and tonight Shaq returns to call out Reggie Evans, Serge Ibaka, Kemba Walker, Carmelo Anthony and of course, the one, the only … Mr. JaVale McGee! Vote for your favorite Shaqtin’ A Fool moment!
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Hang Time Podcast (Episode 107) Featuring Sam ‘Big Smooth’ Perkins

March 6, 2013  ·  7:40PM

HANG TIME HEADQUARTERS – The post-All-Star weekend portion of the NBA’s regular season brings out the clown in those of us who are tasked with running this marathon from start to finish every season.

That includes TNT’s Shaquille O’Neal, who can’t seem get enough of my smiling face, and my co-hosts here on the Hang Time Podcast, “Benedict” Lang Whitaker and Rick “The Backstabber” Fox. Sources tell me that they’ve gotten in on the conspiracy plot, too.

Apparently, they’re lobbying for a name change around here. “Sekou Smith’s Hang Time Podcast” doesn’t do it for these guys anymore. (This is how New Edition broke up back in the day!)

It’s all good, fellas.

Just remember, don’t start any trouble if you don’t want any trouble.

Luckily for these haters we have a non-stop stream of great action and headlines to keep us busy. That includes having a special guest on Episode 107 of the Hang Time Podcast, the one on and only Sam “Big Smooth” Perkins, a guy we like to call the original “Stretch 4.” Long before it was chic to have your power forward working his game from beyond the 3-point line, Big Smooth was doing damage from distance for the Dallas Mavericks, Los Angeles Lakers, Seattle SuperSonics and Indiana Pacers.

Perkins was a co-captain on the gold-medal winning 1984 U.S Olympic Team and a first-team All-Rookie pick in 1985 with the Mavericks. He will also forever be known as the man in the middle of Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley. They went off the board at No. 3, 4 and 5, respectively, in the 1984 NBA Draft. Perkins and Jordan were teammates at the University of North Carolina, where they helped the Tar Heels to the 1982 NCAA title.

He reminisces about his playing days, his first impressions of a young MJ, his pioneering moves as the original Stretch 4, his work as player development coach with the Texas Legends of the D-League and a whole lot more.

We made sure to share our thoughts on LeBron James and the Miami Heat’s 15-game (and counting) win streak, Serge Ibaka‘s peculiar box out tactics, the state of the Los Angeles Lakers this week (how long can Kobe Bryant‘s right elbow hold up?), Harlem Shake Fatigue Syndrome hitting the streets in Minneapolis, the new leader in Braggin’ Rights (he’s from the Bahamas) and plenty more on the robust Episode 107 of the Hang Time Podcast.

LISTEN HERE:

As always, we welcome your feedback. You can follow the entire crew, including the Hang Time Podcast, co-hosts Sekou Smith of NBA.com,  Lang Whitaker of SLAM Magazine and Rick Fox of NBA TV, as well as our new super producer Gregg (just like Popovich) Waigand and the best engineer in the business,  Jarell “I Heart Peyton Manning” Wall.

– To download the podcast, click here. To subscribe via iTunes, click here, or get the xml feed if you want to subscribe some other, less iTunes-y way.

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