It’s easy to look at the Lakers, Bulls, Celtics, Spurs, and Warriors dynasties and say hat the reason they were so good is because they had so many great players. With guys like Shaquille O’Neal, Kobe Bryant, Magic Johnson Kareem Abdul Jabba, Michael Jordan, Bill Russell, Larry Bird, Tim Duncan, Steph Curry, and Kevin Durant, who could blame someone for thinking that. What a lot of fans don’t realize though is, those guys and the other guys on their teams were more often than not disciplined and consistent.
In the NBA wins are extremely hard to get. No team can just walk on the court and get a win. They have to remain disciplined and consistent to be able to win in the league. Especially in today’s game with so many talented guys spread out across the league. Sometimes a team can wins games simply because their star puts up crazy numbers every night but that can only take a team so far. The lack of those two things have contributed to the Thunder’s 1-3 start to the season.
Yes they have played hard and smart in every game and could easily be 4-0 instead. However, they haven’t played with discipline consistent enough to win every game. At times, there are stretches where the Thunder look like the best defensive team in the league but then they just stop. Same for the offense. They move the ball for stretches and get great shots then it just stops.
In their win against the Warriors, neither of those were the case. They played smart and disciplined on both ends of the floor and it showed. Last nights game against the Rockets was a different story.
Last night’s was Chris Paul’s first return to Houston since being traded to the Thunder and Russell Westbrook’s first game against his former team, so a lot were expecting him to give the crowd a vintage Chris Paul performance. That didn’t happen. Paul had a great first game as a member of the Thunder but since then has struggled. Shooting 6-14 for 15 points and only getting 4 assists, Paul showed flashes in the 4th quarter but it was a little too late. The team, a lot of the times in this short season, follow his lead. When he plays hard, is active on the defensive end, and hitting shots, everyone else follows by example and plays as hard as him. The problem is Paul is older and seems like he can’t play at that level consistently. If he doesn’t, the team doesn’t.
You could look at the box score, see that they lost by 4 to a team picked to be at the top of the western conference and know that they competed. You could see decent games from Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Dennis Schroeder, Danilo Gallinari, and Nerlens Noel. Can look at Chris Paul’s stat line and see although he didn’t shoot the ball well and didn’t have many assists, that he was still able to give the team 15 points. All those things are true but they don’t tell the story of the game. They simply do not play with the discipline consistently enough to win basketball games. Especially down the stretch.
The Thunder were down 10 at the start of the 4th quarter and held the Rockets scoreless for the first 5:15 of the quarter due to the stout defense they played. However, in that same time frame, the team was only able to score 6 points. The ball wasn’t moving as much and they were playing very sloppy committing 3 turnovers. From that point on, the balled moved more, creating better and easier shots. No turnovers committed from that point to the end of the game. The defense however, wasn’t the same. The team couldn’t get a stop and gave up too many offensive rebounds.
It’s things like that, that contribute to losing games down the stretch. That consistency and discipline has to be there. Without a guy like Russell Westbrook, who they could depended on to carry them every night, these guys will have to play more consistent and disciplined basketball if they want wins.
The thing about having Russ is he brought an identity to them. Last night he mentioned that he didn’t have any friends while on the court no matter who they are. The Thunder rallied around that kind of mentality and identity and were able to follow Russ’ example to get wins. It wasn’t always pretty, but they still got wins. Everything is about being consistent. If Paul can’t consistently be that guy for them, they have to figure out who can.
Flip the page to see highlights from the last few games and why Russ doesn’t have any friends on the court.