12/22 | G31: Oklahoma City Thunder at Utah Jazz - 8PM CST

[ThunderBolt]

Has anyone asked Russ or Billy directly what wrong with Russ or if he's still injured? Russ isn't the kind of guy to use injury as in excuse even if its legitimate but Billy might say something.

[Pillendreher]

Has anyone asked Russ or Billy directly what wrong with Russ or if he's still injured? Russ isn't the kind of guy to use injury as in excuse even if its legitimate but Billy might say something.

I'm quite confident it's mental, no physical. This feels a lot like to start to last season, but possibly even worse.

[Pillendreher]

“It's simple: Offense doesn't determine a player of Russ's caliber,” George said of Westbrook. “Who cares if he's struggling, or if shots aren't falling? He impacts the game, he makes so many plays, he's a winning player. He does everything for this team.

“Our part is easy. We've got to help, we've got to chip in and we've got to be there when he needs us."

If only Russ could reward them with his own play.

[CROklahoma]

IMO, people are focusing on the wrong story of this game.
Ofcourse Russ was bad, but to focus on criticising him is just a bullock IMO.
His block/foul putted us in a position to win, be positive about something.

The fact we won the game against Utah, who was scorching hot from 3, Sefolosha, Rubio, and others hitting pull up 3s, and despite RW's catastrophic night means we have depth.

We are a threat from multiple positions, and we are executing multiple strategies to get W's.
Kudos to Donovan.

Move on, and win today against Minny, their D# is one of the top in the league after the acquisitions ...

[ThunderBolt]

IMO, people are focusing on the wrong story of this game.
Ofcourse Russ was bad, but to focus on criticising him is just a bullock IMO.
His block/foul putted us in a position to win, be positive about something.

The fact we won the game against Utah, who was scorching hot from 3, Sefolosha, Rubio, and others hitting pull up 3s, and despite RW's catastrophic night means we have depth.

We are a threat from multiple positions, and we are executing multiple strategies to get W's.
Kudos to Donovan.

Move on, and win today against Minny, their D# is one of the top in the league after the acquisitions ...

Utah wasn't on fire from three. They shot 32% which is below the season average.

[Pillendreher]

Utah wasn't on fire from three. They shot 32% which is below the season average.

Speaking of 3-pt-shooting: In the month of December we're shooting 35.4 % from 3 as a team. Ferguson, George and Grant are shooting a combined 44.5 % on 13.7 attempts per game from 3 in December. Save for those 3, not a single Thunder player is even making 32 % of his 3s in December.

[slick_watts]

everyone can argue why westbrook is playing so poorly until we're blue in the face, the fact of the matter is that it's happening and if the thunder want to go anywhere meaningful in the playoffs it will need to change. and that doesn't mean moving the goalposts to 2017-18 when he was worse than prior seasons already, it means westbrook needs to be a top 10 player to have a chance. a team like utah can exploit westbrook into oblivion, and did so last season even, what's going to happen against better teams?

our offense is not good enough to carry a 48-49% ts scorer eating 30% of the team's possessions on the court with another guy off the bench in the 50-51% ts range eating 25% of the team's possessions. it's untenable. westbrook cannot make up for that on defense, and westbrook cannot make up for that as a distributor or whatever made up things people are saying offset his scoring problems. if he needs to rest he should sit out awhile. if it's because his game is changing, then the thunder should stop it. if it's decline, well, we're screwed.

[DoubleJ13]

Adams really flipped with Gobert at halftime. First half was Gobert doing whatever he wanted because Adams was really over helping & just walking away from him while not really scoring or rebounding himself, second half Adams showed up though & finished with his consistent line.

[getrichordie]

everyone can argue why westbrook is playing so poorly until we're blue in the face, the fact of the matter is that it's happening and if the thunder want to go anywhere meaningful in the playoffs it will need to change. and that doesn't mean moving the goalposts to 2017-18 when he was worse than prior seasons already, it means westbrook needs to be a top 10 player to have a chance. a team like utah can exploit westbrook into oblivion, and did so last season even, what's going to happen against better teams?

our offense is not good enough to carry a 48-49% ts scorer eating 30% of the team's possessions on the court with another guy off the bench in the 50-51% ts range eating 25% of the team's possessions. it's untenable. westbrook cannot make up for that on defense, and westbrook cannot make up for that as a distributor or whatever made up things people are saying offset his scoring problems. if he needs to rest he should sit out awhile. if it's because his game is changing, then the thunder should stop it. if it's decline, well, we're screwed.

I’m holding out a little bit of hope that he’s taking more of a backseat and staying off throttle to kind of coast a little bit until we hit the playoffs, but that’s another discussion.

If we actually look at the clues, the simplest explanation is that he is declining to some extent. I forgot what talking head said this, but Westbrook’s “arrow” is clearly pointing down and not up.

If we take his decline to be true, Presti has to make a move that maximizes Westbrook’s remaining strengths: size @ position on defense, playing at a faster pace, and facilitating. If Russ becomes more of a facilitator that’s better for the team as he’s never been a particularly good shooter and this would open up more looks for role players/co-star which can get them going and Westbrook’s shot selection can play off of those things.

This is why we need a better wing. And we need a bargain bin wing that’s better than what we have right now. We don’t need another scorer. We just need what we’ve always we needed at the 2: a 3&D guy. If we get that guy it opens up a lot on offense and defenses will truly to have to pick their poison.

I.E. We can run the offense through Russ, but it doesn’t mean it has to end in a Russ FGA. There is a version of the future where I can see Russ being more Rondo and less dunk-on-your-face Russ.


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[ThunderBolt]

Pretty much agree with what slick said. We wont know for sure until history is written and we can look back and see if this year was part of a downward trend or just a rough year due to injury and other factors. For all we know Russ has Neurogenic Thoracic Outlet Syndrome.

[thekaoswithin]

He's had an ankle injury, knee injury, and twins in the last 3 months. He's just not in the right place conditioning wise. Ideally' he'd sit out until he's in the correct place physically.

That's not going to happen, so we can just hope that he gets back into shape ASAP. I think that + a little bit of decline is a much more reasonable answer then his athleticism suddenly falling off a cliff.

[getrichordie]

He's had an ankle injury, knee injury, and twins in the last 3 months. He's just not in the right place conditioning wise. Ideally' he'd sit out until he's in the correct place physically.

That's not going to happen, so we can just hope that he gets back into shape ASAP. I think that + a little bit of decline is a much more reasonable answer then his athleticism suddenly falling off a cliff.

I would say the knee injury and ankle injury is indicative of decline and the fact that we are still talking about if the ankle injury is still bothering him speaks volumes whereas we’ve seen him bounce back way stronger in the past.


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