Oklahoma City – For some reason, the Thunder just can’t seem to find a way to wins at home. They hosted the new look Rockets tonight and to the surprise of some, they have been one of the leagues best teams since the James Harden trade.
Rockets came into the game having the best defense since the trade and it only took a quarter to find out why. The Thunder couldn’t really get their offense going at all because of how well the Rockets play defense. They switch everything and everyone is able to stay in front of their man or at least contain them. Then when a guy does go by them, they do a really good job of helping off to make a team take a bad shot.
And if that wasn’t bad enough, the Rockets shot lights out tonight to go along with great defense. The Thunder didn’t make things tough on them either. Their rotations were slow and the Rockets got too comfortable. That allowed the Rockets to hit a franchise high in 3 pointers made with 28 and it’s not like they were just throwing them up every time down the floor either. They shot 53.8% from 3.
The Thunder defense has certainly been an issue the last 9 games considering they have given up at least 119 in 7 of the last 9 but that’s really an effort thing. That can be fixed. They played pretty good defense earlier in the season because they gave more effort which they will have to get back to so I don’t necessarily think that’s the bigger issue long term.
As it stands right now, the Thunder have the 27th ranked offense in the league and it’s not all that surprising looking at the roster.
They only have one real guy that can go get his own shot and that’s Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. George Hill can kind of get others a shot, Lu Dort can get to the basket but he hasn’t learned how to take contact yet, Bazley is too erratic at times, and everyone else heavenly depends on someone else to set them up for the most part. That’s the biggest issue.
Some say the best defense is having a good offense and I won’t say that that’s 100% true but if you have a better offense, it sometimes help your defense out. The less shots a team misses, the more opportunity they have to set up their defense instead of scrambling back to find their man. This isn’t to say they don’t need to get better on defense because they absolutely do but they need another guy who can create for himself to help out their offense.
Having a better offense will also help out with their energy which they have been low on since there aren’t any fans in the arena. When guys are hitting shots, everyone is excited but when they’re not, it’s dead. That energy/excitement carries over to the other side of the floor which means they play better defense.
Until they get another guy that can create, the offense will look like this most nights.
The Thunder are back in action on Wednesday night and get a chance to redeem themselves against this same Rockets team.
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