Thunder vs Detroit.....

[slick_watts]

Mediocre half I'd say. Nick Collison and Etan Thomas played pretty well and the defense is definitely improved but what an ugly offense. None of the guys looked good offensively at all, and the last possession by KD was difficult to watch.

I'd like to see James Harden on the court more in the second half, OKC was +10 with him on the court and he was making things happen offensively. We're not really seeing the continuity on offense that was displayed against Sacramento.

Still it's only a 7 point game which is strange since we're shooting 39% from the field and haven't hit one three pointer.

[dre_1614]

Id like to see some smarter play on offense and I think we can win this game.

[slick_watts]

Excellent defense to start the second half. Offense looking better but still a bit disjointed..

[wiff]

Nenad getting hot from just inside the arch.

Nice 3rd quarter so far.

[slick_watts]

Thabo Sefolosha is doing an excellent job on Ben Gordon. He's really giving him problems with his length.

The defense of this team is just much better. This would not be OKC's game last year the way the offense is going.

[dre_1614]

Durant hasn't found his stroke yet.

[slick_watts]

Detroit's been doing a great job keeping Durant off his spots. It was an adjustment at halftime to start going to Krstic instead off those pick and rolls instead of Durant on the curls and it's worked out.

The defense was excellent in the 3rd quarter. Also the Detroit announcers are pretty good.

[dre_1614]

Come on guys close this one out. First test of the year.

[wiff]

Etan with the block.

[slick_watts]

He hasn't shot the ball well and seems tentative looking for his shot on offense but this has been a much better outing by James Harden, he's even been running the offense effectively. Very encouraging to see.

[wiff]

Yeah Harden has really been distributing the ball well.

Also nice to see Westbrook looking for his teammates instead of trying to force his game to get his.

[slick_watts]

Holy jesus Westbrook just punked Ben Gordon

[slick_watts]

Kevin Durant is clutch

[wizkid27]

Close game... hopefully we can hold on for another minute...

[slick_watts]

Looks like KD iced it. The offense wasn't great in this one but this was the best defense I've seen this team play. Holding the Pistons to under 40 second half points, pretty incredible improvement.

Didn't win our first road game until the 18th game of last year.. nice to win the first one.

[wiff]

All and all good game. Nice to see the team win a game with it's defense.

I'm not entirely sold on Detroit being all that good this year. They have lost two key players with Sheed and Billups/Iverson and have added both Gordon and Charlie V but neither one of those guys is better than the player they replaced. Well Gordon is better than Iverson but not Billups. Plus they were with out Rip as well.

It's nice to see the Thunder 2-0.

They play Portland on Nov 1st, that should be a little better measuring stick.

Portland will be playing on the second night of a back to back.

Look for the Portland core vs OKC core threads to go crazy if OKC goes to 3-0.

[slick_watts]

Ben Gordon kept them in the game but Charlie Villanueva did not play well. I agree the Pistons especially without Rip probably aren't the best measuring stick. Even so, this team was so bad on the road last year that any kind of road victory (a comeback victory at that) is huge. You can really see them growing and Brooks' influence on the defensive end especially.

[wizkid27]

Gordon is still just a ridiculous shooter. There were so many times that Sefolosha or Westbrook had hands right in his face or even forced him to fade away and it was nothing but net. He might be the best (non-superstar) scorer in the entire league!

[wiff]

The difference between last night and last year is that Thabo and Durant would have missed those 3's and their D couldn't have stopped anyone and Detroit would have eventually won in OT.
How many times did the thunder Cough up a 6 point lead with 4 minutes left? But hanging on to the win comes with maturing.

You know the difference between winning and losing in the NBA is about two buckets a game.

The year the Sonics won 52 games they scraped out a lot of close wins by two or three points. The following year they lost a lot of those close games.

That's really the difference between being a five seed and or having top five pick.

Portland will be a good test though.