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Okay guys....don't....touch....the....floating....ball.
Yahoo! Box Score
I'm gonna start a new format for the recaps, and see how it goes. It will now be in two parts: Game Summary, and Analysis. I analysed the heck out of this game because it was Thunder-Warriors, but I think I might go with this format from now on. Also, I apologise in advance for the lack of picture, but right now I'm stuck on a 56k connection that finds it very difficult to load pictures. I'll add more later. (Added.)
Game Summary:
Early in the first, it was pretty apparent that the Thunder are having the better game, and had the upper hand going forwward. Without Biedrins, or his usual replacement, Brandan Wright, the Warriors are forced to extreme small ball. Thus, the lane was wide open for the Thunders taking. Midway through the first, the Thunder are getting into a 3-Point Shooting and Fast Break contest with the Warriors, and they were losing. Weaver was really effective here, because he's probably the best player defensively on the Thunder. Sadly, Scott Brooks wants to have him guarding Corey Maggette for some reason, and he's getting overpowered.
Midway through the 2nd, the refs gave the Thunder 2 horrible calls, resulting in a Durant Dunk and a Weaver 3. I had a feeling this could be a turning point in the game. As Brian Davis said, "Goodness, there's some nasty business being played out on the floor here!" But, the Warriors battled right back, because they continued to control the tempo. As the quarter went on, both teams stopped taking shots and started driving. At that point, the game was largely a back-and-forth affair. The Thunder took the 4 point lead into the half on a huge Westbrook buzzer-beater.
After the half, the Thunder exploded out of the gate, going up by 8. However, the lead was quickly diminished as the Warriors fouled themselves back into the game. Their team policy should read, "If you can't score, run into the other guy!" At this point, the Thunder had finally started to control the tempo, but the Warriors were still getting the fouls on the other end. As a result Green had 4 fouls early on, and the Warriors were staying in the game. In the last 5 minutes, the Warriors finally started to get the tempo back, and tied it on a huge Maggette dunk. They continued on to get a 6 point lead going into the fourth, and have all the momentum. Meanwhile, Durant and Westbrook were looking tired.
Before.
After.
In the 4th, the Thunder came right back to put the tempo in their favour and even take the lead, going on a 7-0 run. After that, the Warriors continued to find their stride by driving the lane and getting 3 pointers the old-fashioned way. After going down 106-98, the Thunder copied the Warriors game and started to drive down the lane and draw contact. Thus, they went on a 8-1 run to bring the game within 1. From there, it was back and forth until a Durant dunk with 2 minutes to go to make it 116-111. Then, the Warriors had 2 quick buckets and a freethrow to tie it at 116. The next possession, Westbrook drove on Maggette to foul him out. Eventually, the Warriors had a 1 point lead with about a minute to go, and Westbrook got a quick 2. The ball was turned over once by both teams, and Crawford hit a quick layup with 1.6 seconds left. With the Warriors up by one, there was a quick dish into Green at the right junction. He fooled his defender, and sunk an open jumper off of the glass, resulting in another Thunder win.
Analysis:
JAM!!!!
Even though the Thunder won, my first reaction to tonight was: Where the hell was Wilcox? I mean, sure, he doesn't play defense, but he was the perfect player to destroy the Warriors tonight. They were completely lacking interior defense aside from Turiaf, who could be easily faked out. If you put Wilcox in there, he could have had so many easy buckets.
On top of that, the game tempo was completely in favour of the Warriors for all but about 10 minutes. In those 10 minutes, the Thunder still took a lot of long jumpers and allowed themselves to constantly get fouled on the defensive end.
I may be sounding unnessessarily harsh at this point, but think about this: The Warriors were without Andris Biedrins, who is the cornerstone of their team. He is the rebounding of that team, and he is the blocked shots. If the Thunder can only outrebound the Warriors by 7, and the tallest guy they put on the floor Ronny Turiaf, then something is going wrong. I can pretty safely say that if Andris was on the floor tonight, the Warriors would have had a 10 point win. No joke.
Our best player on the floor tonight was Kevin Durant, who had 27 points, 12 rebounds, and 5 assists. Yet, he only wins the Thunder Down Under award, because there's nothing compared to getting the game winning shot. That's why Jeff Green snags the Thunder Wonder award tonight, despite having only 26 points, 4 boards, and 3 assists. Russell Westbrook grabs the 3rd Star, but he still had an excellent game with 30 points, 4 rebounds, and 7 assists. To be honest, naming these awards is getting a bit boring, because the Thunder have become a 3 headed monster.
But, if there was a player rather than a strategy to blame for the closeness of this game, it has to be Earl Watson, who wins the Thunder Blunder award. There were so many possessions where he'd just dribble it all around the floor and then take some horrible shot. He finished with 9 points on only 4-10 shooting and no 3 pointers. Now, for a guard that may not seem that bad, but all of his shots were 2 pointers and his misses were usually late in the shot clock. That really killed the Thunder momentum whenever it seemed like they might establish a lead.
Jamal Crawford's Futile-Yet-Still-Clutch Layup
On the Warrior side of things, Steven Jackson was finally back in form. He had a lot of turnovers and misses, but he had to do a lot of ballhandling for a Shooting Guard/Small Forward, and most of his misses turned into freethrows. He and Maggette double-handedly kept the Warriors in the game by drawing fouls when the tempo slowed or the shots didn't go down.
Still, there was no hand hotter than the hand of Kelenna Azubuike, who accounted for a lot of the Warriors shooting success. He had 21 Points on 9-10 shooting, which is just insane considering most of his shots were jumpshots. He is the Thunder Plunderer, and I recommend that Earl Watson takes notes.
The Warriors also were able to find success from the small minute guys like Rob Kurz, C.J. Watson, and Anthony Morrow who were all very efficent scorers in the few minutes that they played.
Nonetheless, a win is a win, and I'm looking forward to see if the Thunder can extend their success on the road....
Next Game: Friday at the Los Angeles Clippers
On a small side note, the Thunder have finally achieved 9 wins! If they lose the rest of their games, they'll only tie the 76ers record for suckiness. It seems like a long time ago that we were still talking about that, so it's amazing to see how far we've come in just a month.
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